BX 7233 
.H37 H42 








Class " 3Y, '■ ___■._ 
Book. ,H3 f tH4-2j 
GppyrightlSl? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



HERALD SERMONS 



Second Series 



F 



GEORGE H. HEPWORTH 

AUTHOR OF " HIRAM GOLF'S RELIGION," " THEY MET IN HEAVEN, 
"THE LIFE BEYOND," ETC. 



fj^M'.'W 



I MP 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

)l WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
I8 97 






*> 



Copyright, 1897. 
E. P. DurTON & Co. 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface . . . i 

The Field and the Man 5 

The Bright Side of Life 10 

The Soul and the Body 15 

What We Really Need . . . . .20 

Our Angels 25 

The Soul and the Compass . . . • . . .30 

The Burdens We Bear 35 

Two and Two Make Four 40 

House-Building and Character-Building . . 45 

Thou Shalt not Worry 50 

Why are We Punished? 55 

Love Yourself Last 61 

A Blessed Faith -66 

Sudden Death .71 

What Shall We Do in Heaven? .... 77 

Broken Hearts 83 

Commune with Yourself 88 

Is Faith Omnipotent? 93 

Virtue is Contagious 98 

What is it to Die? 103 

Our Two Homes 108 

iii 



IV CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Beyond the Horizon . . . . . . .113 

Our Faith and Our Bodies 118 

The Seasons and the Soul .' 123 

When We Get There . '. . . . .128 

Easter Morning 133 

God's Children, All 138 

God's Sympathy . . . . . . .143 

The Mission of Doubt 148 

The Peace of the Soul . . «- . . . 153 

Resting Quietly 158 

'Looking at Yourself 163 

A Reasonable Religion 168 

A Better Religion 174 

Souls and Bodies . . . . . . . 179 

The Soul's Possessions . . 184 

Duties and Privileges 189 

Religion is Love 194 

Be of Good Cheer 199 

Spiritual Possibilities ....... 204 

Your Purpose in Life 209 

This Longing for Immortality 214 

The Wicked Tongue 219 

A Wondrous Truth 224 

Living in God 229 



PREFACE. 



The general good will with which the first series 
of these sermons was welcomed has prompted 
my publishers to request me to prepare a second 
volume. 

I have received letters from nearly every quarter 
of the globe referring to the subjects treated, and 
am impelled to say that they have made me very 
happy. 

It is true that some of these letters have been 
severely critical, and to these I have given very 
careful attention. I do not pretend to be infal- 
lible, and it does me no harm to be reminded of 
the fact whenever, in any man's judgment, it seems 
necessary to perform that service. He who be- 
lieves very little is not likely to commend one who 
believes a good deal. Those who are sure of noth- 



2 PREFACE. 

ing do not like my work, because I speak as one 
who is sure of many things. I have no grievance, 
however, for my critics have as good a right to 
their negations as I have to my affirmations. 

I am in daily receipt of other letters which have 
given me great comfort. They show that men 
and women are thinking seriously on serious sub- 
jects ; that there is a general desire to know the 
truth with regard to religion; that there is a 
hunger in the human heart, which can only be 
satisfied by a reasonable faith ; and that, if there 
is any certainty of a future life, or even any good 
ground for hope that there is one, they want to 
know it. 

The days of dogmatic theology are numbered ; 
the merely speculative is giving way to the practi- 
cal. The people are eager to discover corner- 
stones on which to build securely, and to build not 
for to-day only, but for to-morrow and the day 
after. 

It is a good world in which we live, and we 
ought to be very happy while we are in it.' Re- 
ligion, since it tells us how to be happy, has 
become one of the necessities of life ; and if we 
peer through our tears into the future, and wonder 



PREFACE. 3 

what the dear ones are doing who have sighed 
their good-night, can our dreams do. us harm? If 
Christ could say to the thief on the cross, " This 
day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise," is there 
not a Paradise for us also? 

I have no fitting words in which to thank my 
audience for the generous attention with which 
they have listened to me, or for the encourage- 
ment which they have furnished me. I can only 
say that, as the summers and winters come and 
go, bringing with them an enlarged experience, 
my. faith increases and my doubts diminish. If I 
can be the means of changing despair into hope in 
any one's life, or of convincing any one that after 
every storm there is a bow in the sky, or of per- 
suading any one that death is only an incident in 
the soul's career, I shall be repaid a thousandfold 
for my labors. 

G. H. H. 



HERALD SERMONS. 



THE FIELD AND THE MAN. 

" Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields." — John iv. 35. 

THERE is a curious and instructive resemblance 
between a wheat-field and a man. The field can 
teach us many a moral lesson to which we may 
profitably give heed. 

First, the soil is full of dormant possibilities. 
Under right conditions it will yield an abundant 
crop, but the conditions are imperative, and we 
must accord with them or the crop will never be 
reaped. If you allow the field to do as it will, — 
unless it is disciplined and cultivated, unless some- 
thing is given to it and something taken away from 
it, — it will be valueless to the end of time. Left 
simply to itself, you will find it in the autumn just 
what it was in the spring. 

5 



6 HERALD SERMONS. 

This is strictly true of a man also. He too is 
full of possibilities, and they are all dormant. 
Give him the right environment, put into him a 
noble impulse and a holy aspiration, give him the, 
training which will suppress certain tendencies and 
substitute others, the education which will enable 
him to see his best self, the very sight of which 
will render him ambitious to reach it, and you will 
produce a manhood which will render him little 
lower than the angels. On the other hand, let 
him lie fallow, or let him follow the lead of his 
impulses and caprices, his appetites and passions, 
and in middle life you will have a ruin, wasted 
years, and no achievement worthy the notice of 
either earth or heaven. 

It is perfectly natural for the field to grow 
weeds ; it would seem that it prefers weeds to 
grain ; and, though this fact is puzzling, every 
tiller of the soil must face it. Weeds require less 
nourishment than grain, and they need no care or 
attention. Only let the field alone and the weeds 
will flourish abundantly. 

It is equally curious that evil habits need no 
cultivation. They appear to come by a kind of 
spontaneous generation. If a man simply lets 



THE FIELD AND THE MAN. 7 

himself alone, to go where the uppermost impulse 
may lead him, he very seldom takes the road to 
heaven, but, on the other hand, is apt to sink even 
in his own estimation. Moral weeds flourish with 
very little sunshine and multiply themselves with 
surprising rapidity. 

In the second place, the field must be plowed, 
harrowed, and sowed with seed. There are forces 
— very productive forces — under the sod which 
can find their way to the surface only after the 
plow has torn the sod to pieces. It seems a ruth- 
less kind of work to do, to run that plowshare 
down deep into the soil, and while it is being done 
the loam may groan with pain and wonder why 
such implacable intrusion should be thought neces- 
sary. But we, who have some information on the 
subject, know that the plow is the loam's best friend 
as well as the best friend of the farmer. The most 
valuable and the richest elements of the soil are 
down where only the plowshare can reach them. 
It does reach them and, in spite of the apparent 
roughness, it does bring a blessing to the field, for 
" No plow, no crop," is the motto of nature. 

The same is true of man. The noblest elements 
of character are deep down in the soul. They can 



8 HERALD SERMONS. 

never be brought to the surface and can never 
obtain control of the man's life until God's plow 
is driven as far as the share will go. When the 
depths have been brought up where the sun and 
dew can reach them, and when the man has been 
so torn by the harrow of experience that he be- 
comes conscious of his manifest destiny and of the 
achievements which are possible, then the real 
spiritual life begins. 

If you ask why a man should be plowed up in 
order that he may bring forth something worthy 
of himself, I can only answer with perfect frank- 
ness that I do not know. It is one of the strangest 
problems in the universe, and I doubt if we shall 
reach a solution until we stand on the farther shore 
and look back. The fact, however, is not to be 
denied in the case of the man any more than in the 
case of the field. 

God's plow has a close relation to spiritual ex- 
cellence. The noblest souls that walk the earth 
have suffered. Greatness cannot be attained with- 
out trial and struggle, any more than wheat will 
grow in an unplowed field. There is more power 
for good in a life of hard work than in a life of 
luxury, and there is more of the higher kind of 



THE FIELD AND THE MAN. 9 

happiness in the years which so rudely tossed us 
about that we were compelled to cry to heaven for 
help than in the years when we had all we desired 
and were satisfied with the earth. 

It is the carefully tilled soil that is covered with 
rich grain, and it is the disciplined soul that pro- 
duces a true manhood and womanhood. The in- 
exorable law is that your own way shall prove 
itself the worst way, and that God's way, which is 
sometimes plentifully sprinkled with disappoint- 
ments, is after all and in the long run the best 
way. 

True religion, therefore, consists in recognizing 
these facts and in seeing the purpose which God 
has in forcing upon you a varied experience. The 
Christ spirit is a spirit of resignation and cheerful 
submission to the higher and the wiser will. It is 
a hard lesson to learn, but heaven is ahead of us, 
and when we get there we shall be glad to have 
learned it. 



THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE. 

" Serve the Lord with gladness : come before His presence with 
singing." — Ps. c. 2. 

Our environment is one of exceeding beauty, 
but it is a matter of temperament and disposition 
whether we appreciate and enjoy it or not. The 
eyes of the body may be so defective that the sight 
is dim, and the eyes of the soul can be affected in 
the same way. If I had the power, therefore, and 
wanted to make a man happier in his surroundings, 
I should not change the surroundings, but rather 
the man. Nobody gets out of his life half as much 
as God has put into it. Our egotism will not allow 
us to blame ourselves for this, and so we find a 
wretched kind of relief in blaming the Almighty. 
We wonder why He does not arrange matters 
differently, and at the same time the angels are 
wondering why we do not see things differently. 
There is no sunset for one whose eyes are closed, 

10 



THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE. I I 

and there is no joy for one who believes himself 
to be badly treated. There never yet was an en- 
vironment so perfect that a man could not find 
fault with it if he had a bitter soul, nor an environ- 
ment so full of hardship that a man could not find 
some comfort in it if he was willing to look and 
knew where to look. 

The chief mission of religion, as I understand it, 
is, first, to change a man's attitude toward events 
by the necromancy of faith in God's love and 
wisdom, and, second, to so inform him that he 
will know how to use his life to the best advan- 
tage. That is what is meant by the new birth, 
and in very truth the general outlook becomes so 
different from anything before experienced that 
no greater change could be made if he were to be 
literally born again. 

It is possible to think of the good things and lay 
the others aside, to dwell on what makes for hap- 
piness and ignore all else ; but our human nature 
finds it difficult to do this, because the habit of 
doing just the contrary has become fixed. 

The catalogue of things to be grateful for is very 
large. What a pleasure, for instance, it is to be 
alive, and what a beautiful mystery life is! To 



12 HERALD SERMONS. 

think, to feel, to aspire, to reach out with specula- 
tive daring toward the stars, to dream of other 
worlds like this, to take a still loftier flight and 
explore that far-away country which we call hea- 
ven — how marvelous a creature is man, what a 
perfect piece of machinery he is if regarded from 
the standpoint of materialism even, and how much 
more marvelous when you recognize that interior 
something which is independent of the mere ma- 
chine and will live a better and broader life without 
it after the airy nothing which we call death has 
done its little all ! 

And then, what a world this body-and-soul 
creature has for a residence! Can even ecstasy 
conceive anything more beautiful than the physical 
universe? The changing seasons, unrolled day 
after day by unseen hands and presenting a new 
picture with every dawn : the springtime, when 
the apparently dead earth breaks forth into re- 
newed life ; the glorious summer, when the im- 
penetrable mysteries of growth unfold themselves 
and blossoms change to fruit ; the ruddy autumn, 
when the work of the year reaches its consum- 
mation, and when laden trees and vineyards and 
ripened harvests yield their abundance ; the frosty 



THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE. 1 3 

winter, when forests and fields fall on slumber, 
perhaps to dream of a better springtime to come — 
how awe-inspiring it all is, and with what strange 
emotions it fills the heart! And as we ponder, 
how helpless we are, how little, how like children 
who have scarcely mastered the simplest rudiments 
of knowledge, and what a vast, what an inexpres- 
sibly grand territory stretches out before us, in- 
viting us to penetrate its mysteries and solve its 
problems! 

But take the next step. The chief object in life 
is not to know, but to be, and events have been 
so arranged that if we use them skilfully they will 
each one of them become a stepping-stone to higher 
things. The soul of childhood is nothing but a 
bundle of undeveloped possibilities; the powers of 
an archangel are packed within that narrow space. 
The soul grows just as the body does — no one 
knows how ; but, strangely enough, when the body 
has reached its maturity the soul is still in its 
adolescence, and sooner or later you face the curi- 
ous fact that every man is a double, and that when 
one part of him is in the ripe fruit the other part 
is still in blossom. 

Now, if what you call your religion does not 



14 HERALD SERMONS. 

practically convince you that life can be made very- 
beautiful as well as holy, and does not persuade 
you that there is joy to be found almost every- 
where if you will train your eyes to look for it, 
then put that religion aside and go to the Christ 
for a new set of truths. When God has given 
you something, do not take what man gives you 
in its stead. Your creed is well enough if you 
leave it on the shelf, but you must keep the Ser- 
mon on the Mount within reach for constant use. 

Yes, there are sighs and tears, but one may even 
weep with hope, and your sorrow at the setting 
of the sun is cheered by the promise of a better 
morrow. There is no experience which may not 
be used for your benefit if you and God engage in 
the task together. 



THE SOUL AND THE BODY. 

" Thy faith hath made thee whole." — Matt. ix. 22. 

THERE are two incidents in the life of Christ 
which have always puzzled me. Their significance 
has not been noted by the religious world, or, if 
noted, has been put aside as of secondary impor- 
tance, whereas it seems to me they should occupy 
a very prominent position. They refer to our 
daily lives, to our attitude toward the ills to which 
flesh is heir, and to the possibility, under given 
conditions, of maintaining that physical health on 
which our happiness so much depends. 

A woman touched the hem of His garment, 
believing that thereby she should be healed. He 
who saw all things saw her heart, and He told her 
that it was not the touch of His garment, but her 
own faith, that had acted as a remedial agency. 
The touch was only the symbol of her faith, but 
the faith itself had chased the disease out of her 
system. It was not He who had worked what we 

15 



1 6 HERALD SERMONS. 

are apt to call a miracle, for she had in herself a 
miracle-working power. 

That there is a law underlying this incident must 
be apparent to all, but that law has very seldom 
been recognized and still less seldom put to a 
practical use. That it may be possible to overcome 
disease by a thought instead of a drug, and that 
love of God and confidence in Him have much to 
do with keeping us whole, or, to use the old Eng- 
lish equivalent, hale (as in the phrase " hale and 
hearty"), is one of the doctrines of Christianity 
which have been persistently ignored. 

But there is something more. A centurion, who 
also had faith, desired to have his servant healed, and 
sought the great Physician for that purpose. Christ 
said to him, " As thou hast believed, so be it done 
unto thee," and the servant was healed in the self- 
same hour. Our surprise at that statement knows no 
bounds. The servant, who may or may not have 
had faith, was made whole through the agency of 
a man whose faith was undoubted. A second time 
it is intimated that faith is the miracle-worker, but 
in this latter case the man who had the faith and 
who was interested in the patient actually cured 
the man who perhaps had no faith at all. 



THE SOUL AND THE BODY. 1 7 

The world has been thinking of this subject for 
a long time. We put a coin into the hand of one 
who asks such a favor and are not surprised to see 
his groans of despair give way to smiles of happi- 
ness ; but if Christ be true, we can put a thought 
into a sick man's heart as easily as we can put a 
coin into his palm, and the thought will change the 
whole current of the recipient's feelings, just as the 
receipt of the coin did. In other words, it is a 
literal fact that we can minister to a mind diseased 
and that a mind diseased can minister to itself. 

We cannot restrain our astonishment at such 
an assertion, even though it fall from the lips of 
Christ Himself. For nearly twenty centuries that 
statement has been in the air, as electricity has 
been in the clouds. We have at last caught the 
lightning and harnessed it to our comforts and 
conveniences, but the fact that faith can make us 
whole still wings its flight far above our heads 
without being captured for use in our daily lives. 

At long intervals we become startled at the 
recital of some cure in answer to prayer, but this 
practical world receives it with a shrug, and it is 
quickly sent into the darkness of the background. 
A physical law is perfectly apprehended, but a 



1 8 HERALD SERMONS. 

spiritual law is ignored as inefficient. We know 
what drugs will do, but we do not yet know what 
ideas will do. Scientists tell us that a diseased 
body will twist the soul out of shape, and we nod 
assent, for the experiment has been tried again 
and again. But if any one asserts that the converse 
is true and that a healthy soul will go far toward 
making a healthy body, skeptics tell us that we are 
wandering about in a region of mystery. Perhaps 
so, but truth is that it ought not to be a region of 
mystery, and that sometime, when the race is older, 
it will not be. 

I can see no reason for accepting one portion of 
Christianity which happens to suit my fancy, and 
rejecting another portion which funs counter to 
my prejudices. If Christ was mistaken in one 
thing He may be in another. So when He says, 
"Thy faith hath made thee whole," I stoutly as- 
sert that faith is the true basis of health. God did 
not make a diseased world, and if it is diseased it 
must be contrary to His wishes. A man should 
be hale to the hour when he starts for heaven, and 
then fall as the ripe apple drops from the tree. 
That is the order of nature, without doubt. 

When the heart is right, when we love God and 



THE SOUL AND THE BODY. 1 9 

have confidence in Him, the soul comes to be 
stronger than the body, whereas at present the 
body dominates the soul. The wrong sovereign 
has been crowned. A faithful spirit, which sees 
the glory of human life, recognizes its own dignity, 
and keeps the grandeur of eternity in view — to 
such a spirit the body owes allegiance. 

You cannot meditate on God without feeling 
the delicious results in your whole physical system, 
and if men had the faith of the woman in the text, 
the tendency would be toward physical as well as 
spiritual health. Religion covers the whole man, 
his body as well as his soul, and the Christ can 
heal the one as He can bless the other. 



WHAT WE REALLY NEED. 

" Take that thine is, and go thy way." — Matt. xx. 14. 

THERE is a large number of things in the world 
which we can get on very well without. There is 
also a large number of things which we covet be- 
cause we think them necessary to our happiness, 
but which we really do not need. Lastly, there 
are a few things, but only a few, which we must 
have in order to make our lives what God intended 
they should be. 

A large part of our discontent comes from not 
having what we ourselves think we ought to have, 
but what Providence evidently regards as unneces- 
sary to our development. This difference of opin- 
ion between us and the Almighty is the fruitful 
source of much human misery. We demand that 
He shall agree with us, whereas it is clearly our 
duty to agree with Him. Our ignorance is the 
standard by which we measure His wisdom, and 



WHAT WE REALLY NEED. 2 1 

yet if one of our children should assume the same 
attitude toward us it would well-nigh break our 
hearts. Instead of accepting what comes and 
making the best of it, we constantly pray that God 
will do what we want to have done, and because 
the prayer is not answered we not only grow 
spiritually cold, but open the door to a great many 
doubts, which literally freeze the nobler part of 
our natures. 

If a tyro should come into our warehouse or 
manufactory and ask us to conduct our business 
on the basis of his inexperience rather than on 
that of our hard-earned knowledge, the difference 
between us and God is that we should indignantly 
eject him, whereas God pities us for doing pre- 
cisely the same thing. The forbearance of the 
Almighty with our wilfulness and conceit, His 
everlasting patience with us under such circum- 
stances, is one of the most wonderful facts of the 
universe, and one of the most thrilling and star- 
tling. 

Human life may be reverently compared to 
an opera. God is the author of the music, and 
He gives each person the part he is to take. Re- 
ligion is simply the drill-master, who constantly 



22 HERALD SERMONS. 

enjoins upon us the necessity of strictly following 
the score, and constantly insists that we cannot 
make changes in the score without injuring the 
unity of the production. Of course I do not refer 
to the formulas of religion, but to its essence. The 
formulas are simply certain men's opinions of re- 
ligion, or possibly their prejudices, while its essence 
is contained in the statement that the author of the 
opera knows better how it should be rendered than 
you do. 

But suppose each singer should insist on sing- 
ing in accordance with his own interpretation, and 
suppose further that you had the impression that 
these various and discordant interpretations repre- 
sented the author and not the personal peculiarities 
of the singers, what a strange piece of music it 
would all be, and what a queer idea of the author 
the listener would have ! - Well, that is precisely 
what we are doing all the time in matters of re- 
ligion, and that is why we make of it such a jumble 
and jangle. Sing the music as it was written, and 
it is exquisitely beautiful and uplifting; but let it 
be sung as each individual thinks it ought to be 
sung, and the discord becomes deafening and dis- 
heartening. 



WHAT WE REALLY NEED. 23 

Our real wants are very few, though we are apt 
to think them very many. We can be happy — 
this is true of at least nine tenths of the world — 
with what we have if we know how to make the 
most of it and the best of it. It takes but little 
to make the soul contented if we do not try to 
make our avarice and our envy contented also. 
When we begin to count the things we ought to 
have we begin to be miserable, but when we begin 
to be thankful for the things we really possess we 
begin to be happy. You do not need wealth, nor 
yet fame, nor a palace, nor a park. If you have a 
shelter and have made that shelter a home, if you 
have dear ones whose love is trustful and confid- 
ing, whose lives are woven into yours by threads 
of steel, pray what more is there to ask for? If 
you are not happy then, you can hardly expect to 
be happy in heaven, for heaven has only love to 
offer. 

This happiness is the product of faith, and of 
faith alone. A love which death can destroy is 
simply anticipated anguish. Souls that are knitted 
together may be torn apart, but their love for each 
other is as indestructible and as lasting as the 
throne of God. 



24 HERALD SERMONS. 

The man who has the moral courage to recog- 
nize how few things he really needs, who disdains 
the world's pomp and show, who refuses to listen 
to the clamorings of wealth and its charlatan pre- 
tensions, has reached that spiritual eminence on 
which he finds himself in the company of the 
Christ and of the noblest men and women who 
have dropped the benediction of holy lives on a 
weary, a hungry, and a troubled world. With 
health, with honest work, with the love of those 
whose arms are about your neck and whose affec- 
tion will never fail you, with a simple faith that is 
like sunshine and dew — with these things you are 
one of the most privileged men on the earth, and 
even the New Jerusalem will have but few addi- 
tional joys to offer. 



OUR ANGELS. 

" Angels came and ministered unto Him." — Matt. iv. II. 

It is a glad surprise to the careful student of 
the older and the newer Scriptures that the beings 
whom we call angels occupy so prominent a 
position in the Father's dealings with His children 
on the earth. And it is not the least curious fact 
in the history of our modern religious life that the 
mission of these angels should be either ignored 
or practically discredited. We have not been 
willing to admit that God uses any secondary 
agencies in the accomplishment of His purposes. 

As a consequence we suffer spiritual loss, for 
there is great comfort to be had in the belief that 
a throng of invisible beings are nigh at hand in 
our time of trouble, pitying us in our distress, and 
lending such aid as lies in their power. How many 
of our burdens are lightened by their succoring 
strength, how frequently we are enabled to resist 

25 



26 HERALD SERMONS. 

temptation by their power added to our own, how 
often. holy suggestions come from them, which we 
attribute to our own minds or hearts, no one can 
tell. But that they do come from heaven to earth, 
and that our daily lives are blessed by their pres- 
ence, no one who accepts the record of Christ's 
ministry as veritable history can possibly doubt. 

Their doings run through the pages of the Old 
Testament like a golden thread in a costly fabric. 
The dark places in the life of the ancient Hebrews 
are illumined by them, and every prophet held 
communion with them and received from them 
the mandates of the Most High. Daniel, when 
speaking of the strait he was in, said, " Behold, 
there stood before me as the appearance of a man. 
. . . And he informed me, and talked with me;" 
and his experience is so multiplied by others of a 
like nature that we are almost startled by their 
constant recurrence. They shine like stars on a 
winter night ; and to them the Hebrews were in- 
debted for their courage and their national glory. 

The birth of Christ was announced by an angel ; 
the flight into Egypt with the Child was com- 
manded by an angel ; when the temptation of 
Christ was ended He was ministered unto by 



OUR ANGELS. 2J 

angels ; when the tearful women stood at the tomb 
it was an angel, " whose raiment was white as 
snow," who proclaimed the resurrection; and 
when the mob followed the Lord, and the disciples 
talked of resistance by force, He rebuked them, 
declaring that if needful He could call on " more 
than twelve legions of angels." 

I adduce only a few out of many instances, but 
they are sufficient to establish and emphasize the 
fact that we are seen, though we do not see, and 
that heaven holds the earth in its arms as a mother 
her babe. No distance forms a barrier either to 
our longing or to a response to it. We may 
not feel the hand that is placed in ours, but it is 
there ; we do not hear with the hearing of the ear, 
but with the hearing of the heart ; we do not see 
these guardian spirits with the eye, but with our 
inner consciousness we are sure that • they are 
close by. 

What a glorious realm of thought we are ex- 
ploring! What a glorious realm of fact is revealed 
to us! The poor soul that is being driven along 
the downward path by the fury of his passions is 
accompanied at every step by God's messengers, 
— the messengers of His pity and His love, — and 



28 HERALD SERMONS. 

with their supremest efforts they try to bar his 
way to further wretchedness. The lonely heart 
that has been chilled by frosty misfortune, and 
falls upon a desperate mood that regards even 
crime with indifference, is surrounded by invisible 
agents, who are doing all that heaven itself can 
suggest to make the way smoother and the sky 
brighter. And the mourning soul, sitting in the 
shadow of a great bereavement, looking upward 
with tear-dimmed eyes — is no one near to whisper 
consolation ? is God unmindful or powerless to as- 
suage this grief? The angels, who represent God's 
sympathy, are in that darkened room, and the 
peace that comes to the broken heart comes from 
above. 

We have here a practical fact, but we have made 
too little use of it. The wonder is that we have 
neglected it so long,- for it is one of the most pre- 
cious truths to be found within the whole range of 
God's providence. Not alone, never alone, but 
always in the companionship of ministering spirits, 
enjoined by the Father to do us good service if 
we will allow them to do so. 

And who are these heavenly beings? Why not 
those who have been bound to us for many years 



OUR ANGELS. 2Q. 

and who love us now more than ever? Shall they 
who have been so dear, but who were summoned 
to the other land, be sent far away, while strangers 
do His bidding for our behoof? Our guardians 
are those who have been closest to our hearts, I 
believe, and they are always ready to come at our 
call. They hover about us, guide our wandering 
footsteps, avert impending danger, do what they 
may to encourage and cheer, and after the night- 
fall, when the morning comes, they will be the 
first to greet us and welcome us to that home 
where partings shall be forever unknown. 



THE SOUL AND THE COMPASS. 

" So God created man in His own image ; . . . male and female 
created He them." — Gen. i. 27. 

That is a very remarkable and a very odd state- 
ment. It is the strongest assertion of the dignity 
of human nature that could be put into language. 
It is a declaration also that our ability to achieve 
is without limit, and it is a curious commentary on 
the injunction to "be perfect, even as your Father 
in heaven is perfect." If my first text represents 
the fact of the case, my second need not be re- 
garded as containing any exaggeration, for it simply 
expresses what ought to be rightfully and fairly 
expected. 

If we are made in the image of God, and if He 
did breathe into us the breath of His own life, 
then we should not only feel chagrin at the little 
we have accomplished, but be encouraged to begin 
another day's work with the hope of better results. 

30 



THE SOUL AND THE COMPASS. 3 1 

What enthusiasm comes from the thought that 
some part of God is in literal fact a part of us, and 
that some part of us is a part of God ! God, there- 
fore, is to a certain extent resident in every soul, 
and every soul has impulses which are godlike. 

Why does the magnetic needle point to the 
north ? Because that omnipotent and omnipresent 
something which no man can accurately define has 
been sent through its substance. As a mere bar 
of steel it cares no more for the north than for the 
east ; but when it has felt the magic current it be- 
comes a steel bar plus a mysterious endowment, 
and that precious endowment so changes its char- 
acter that thereafter it turns restlessly on its pivot 
until it points to the north, and then it becomes 
quiet. 

It may be deflected, however, by some powerful 
influence, and in that case it is impossible to de- 
pend on it until the foreign and intrusive substance 
is removed. 

It is precisely so with the soul. Naturally it 
turns to God, like the needle to the pole, for the 
simple reason that the part of God within us seeks 
its source ; but unworthy influences, like selfishness 
and avarice, can deflect that soul from its true 



32 HERALD SERMONS. 

direction and so smother it that nearly all traces 
of God are lost. 

What we need, then, is to get back to a full con- 
sciousness that God and we are closely related' to 
each other. Therein lies the secret of religion. 
Call it the new birth or what you will, it is nothing 
more nor less than clearing away the underbrush 
and worldly rubbish and giving the sun a chance 
to shine on our roots. 

Having been made in the image of God, it does 
not seem strange that Adam and Eve received 
constant communications from heaven. It would 
have been very strange indeed if it had been other- 
wise. Why should not the angels have been glad 
to talk with beings in whom a part of their God 
was resident? And as for us in these later days, 
the only reason why we cannot get into closer 
association with the other world, and the only 
reason why this world seems at times so dull and 
unprofitable, is that we have covered up the con- 
sciousness of His presence and love, and are under 
the fascinating but destructive spell of things 
earthly and temporary. 

Shut yourself away from the world for a while, 
think seriously of the soul and its needs, uncover 

V 



THE SOUL AND THE COMPASS. 33 

yourself to yourself, find out who and what you 
are and who and what you are to be in the future 
— do this with courage and skill, and you will soon 
see that the present life is of less worth than you 
thought it, and that the other life is more real than 
you have ever dreamed. 

We must return to a recognition of our princely 
dignity as members of the great household of God, 
Our religion, when viewed from this standpoint, 
becomes the most necessary and the most encour- 
aging, as it is the most divine, thing in the world. 
It is, as the etymology of the word indicates, that 
wonderful something which binds God and the 
soul together in eternal unity. 

Occupying such a vantage-ground, our human 
life is illuminated as when the sun rises over the 
hilltops on a misty morning. The heat that comes 
from the magnificent and beneficent orb of day 
lifts all mists from the landscape and develops its 
beauty and grandeur. In like manner, doubts, 
fears, perplexities, worries, are dissipated by the 
actual presence of God in the soul, and you be- 
come calm, restful, confiding, looking upon the 
experiences of this present time as needful to a 
proper preparation for the time to come. 



34 HERALD SERMONS. 

The nobler part of you is in the ascendant, 
makes you master of events, and the whole com- 
plexion of life is changed. Do but think of this 
matter seriously and you will acquire new strength. 
Take away from the compass all disturbing sub- 
stances, let the needle obey its natural impulse, 
and it will swing to the north. Under like condi- 
tions the soul will swing toward heaven. 



THE BURDENS WE BEAR. 

"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden." — 
Matt. xi. 28. 

THE prevalence of sorrow in this lower world is 
somewhat appalling to a sympathetic nature. It 
is to be found in a thousand shapes and in every 
nook and corner. The clouds have hardly held 
more raindrops than the tears which have fallen 
from human eyes. Hearts are heavy everywhere, 
and if we ask why this should be, the answer must 
be sought with patience and perseverance. 

There are other experiences, besides those con- 
nected with the vacant chair, which are very hard 
to bear. It is even safe to say that death has 
rivals in the production of suffering, and that the 
loss of loved ones does not rank first among the 
incidents that have broken our hearts. When one 
has passed beyond the mysterious limit of life and 
disappeared from our sight, though not from our 
memory and affection, it may be that his fortune 

35 



36 HERALD SERMONS. 

is better than ours. He has taken the path which 
leads to the land where sorrows are unknown, 
while we remain to bear alone the burdens which 
he aforetime shared with us. It is possible to be 
glad — with a painful kind of gladness — that for 
him has come the end of physical agony and the 
sleep which follows life's fitful fever. 

There are other sorrows which make us old 
before our time — the endless trials and disap- 
pointments which fill us with anxiety and are so 
discouraging that we often wonder what there is 
in life, that we should cling to it so tenaciously. 
We feel like men in a boat rowing against the cur- 
rent, who make no headway, however eagerly they 
may bend to the oars. 

It is concerning this class of sorrows that we 
need counsel and an encouraging word if one can 
be found. For example, this man began life with 
high hopes, and as the years went by these hopes 
withered and fell, one by one, until nothing is left 
except the dull monotony of drudgery. The bells, 
which merrily chimed in other days, have been 
tolling for many a year now. Another man 
dreamed of a competency for himself and his dear 
ones, but the profits of business failed him. He 



THE BURDENS WE BEAR. 37 

would give his family everything, but what he 
calls fate is against him, and he can give them 
nothing. In another home some large-hearted 
boy has gone wrong, and, like an ocean steamer 
under full headway in a fog, may reach the wreck- 
ing rocks at any moment. In still another home 
the daughter, with misplaced affection, is about to 
take the risks of an unfortunate marriage, the re- 
sults of which she cannot be made to see, though 
others see them only too plainly. 

These are among the most serious events of life, 
and they are happening somewhere every day. 
There are few homes in which some shadow of this 
kind has not fallen, and they show us that death 
is not the only thing, nor yet the chief thing, to 
be dreaded. 

Why we must suffer in this way I cannot tell. 
I simply repeat the lines : 

" God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform." 

But it is certain that He never sent a cloud that 
had not a silver lining, and in His all-including 
providence no event can occur which has not at- 
tached to it some measure of hope and cheer. 



38 HERALD SERMONS. 

If this life were all, then, it must be confessed, 
our lot would be a hard one. A sadder or more 
desperate plight than man would find himself in, 
were another life denied, cannot well be conceived. 
It may seem to be a grim sort of argument, but it 
is nevertheless fair to say that our sufferings in 
this world make the necessity of another world 
absolutely imperative. Looked at from the lowest 
standpoint, this life, with its inexorable griefs, its 
bent shoulders, its bleeding hearts and eyes be- 
dimmed, demands a future in the name of ordinary 
justice. Looked at from the highest standpoint, 
this life is a period of discipline to prepare us for 
a nobler state of existence. But what should be 
said — except that the whole universe is a delusion 
and a sham — if, having toilf ully prepared ourselves, 
we be told that there is nothing to be prepared for ? 
That argument for immortality is like the cry of 
innocence condemned to death by a capricious 
tyrant, and demanding that the sentence shall be 
set aside. It is irrefutable, and can no more be 
broken than a piece of chilled steel. 

The woes, the groans, the sorrowing homes of 
this old earth — aye, the lives that have been 
wrecked by overcoming temptation, and the very 



THE BURDENS WE BEAR. 39 

crimes that have been committed — cry out for im- 
mortality, in which wrongs may be righted and 
peace and rest will follow hardship and struggle. 

You may find good cheer in this advice : to do 
the best your circumstances allow, to bear what 
comes as bravely as you can, to keep youf heart 
pure and your hands clean, no matter what betides, 
and to do all this in the strength of that wonderful 
Being who said, " Come unto Me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
Your relations to God are not to be shaken by 
the fact that you do not understand His providence. 
On the contrary, when the path is rugged and the 
night is dark — and very dark indeed it is some- 
times — -cling all the closer to your faith, for it is 
the only thing under the stars that can give you 
help. There are bright days ahead, — if not here, 
then there, — and once on the other side, we shall 
see plainly what is now hidden. 



TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR. 

" And I will give unto every one of you according to your works. " 
— Rev. ii. 23. 

WHEN you get down to the foundations of re- 
ligion you find that they consist of that sturdy 
common sense which always prevails in the end. 
Men have a great many theories about what they 
call the judgment-day, but it is patent to every 
careful observer that each day of life is a judg- 
ment-day, and that at every sundown God an- 
nounces to your soul the penalty or reward which 
naturally follows your deeds, the penalty which 
you must inevitably suffer, or the reward you will 
certainly enjoy, on their account. 

A great many people are under the impression 
that they can wipe out the bad which they have 
done defiantly by doing something good as an 
irksome duty. The laws of the universe, however, 
will have to be considerably changed before that 

40 



TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR. 4 1 

will become possible. And a great many men 
labor under the strange hallucination that they can 
lead utterly selfish lives, giving full swing to their 
passions and their avarice, indulging in dishonest 
practices to the top of their bent, and then, when 
nearing the end of their tether, can repent, — but 
keep all their ill-gotten gains, — and so escape the 
consequences of their threescore misspent years. 

I should have very little respect for a man who 
supposed that he could hoodwink the eternal laws 
in that way. There is no sleight of hand possible 
with the verities of God, and the sternest of all 
facts is that you cannot be made good by a miracle 
and cannot be happy unless you have earned the 
right to happiness by rectitude of life. Religion 
tells you in trumpet tones that as you sow so you 
will reap, and that if you plant thistles in the 
spring you cannot hope to gather corn in October. 
The doctrine of Christ is the most uncompromis- 
ing thing in the world ; there is neither favoritism 
nor injustice in it; and that is only another way 
of saying that if you have furnished your house 
with filth you need not hope that cleanliness will 
be satisfied to abide in it until it has been thor- 
oughly put in order. 



42 HERALD SERMONS. 

If a man is told to go north, and chooses to go 
south instead, every step he takes leads him out 
of the way. He may say, if he pleases, that he 
likes what he finds in the south better than what 
is promised in the north. He may even deny that 
there is any north, and so give himself up to the 
pleasures of the tropics. Be sure that the Al- 
mighty made no mistake when He declared that 
no one can be contented with his back to the north 
and his face to the south. Sooner or later, either 
in this life or in the life to come, he must reach 
that point of vision from which he will see the 
truth as God has stated it. Then, when he comes 
to himself, discovers that he has wasted his years 
and crippled his soul, and concludes to radically 
change his action, what has religion to say to him ? 
It approves of his repentance, because he is there- 
by at a standstill in the work of injuring himself. 
It tells him that the moment he comes over to the 
side of the Almighty the Almighty will make it 
as easy as possible — that is the awful phrase, " as 
easy as possible " — for him to retrace his steps. 
But does religion tell him that no consequences 
will follow those long years of selfish indulgence? 
that some miracle will take him in its arms and 



TWO AND" TWO MAKE FOUR. 43 

put him bodily and spiritually back to the point in 
his journey from which he began to go wrong? 
Not at all. 

We can all see that the wrecked body is beyond 
repair, and that, though the better course of life 
may save the remnants of his broken health, it 
cannot and will not give him the vigor and strength 
he has thrown away. The same truth holds good 
of the soul, the only difference being that, while 
the body is used only for a limited time and has 
therefore very slender recuperative power, the soul, 
being without limitations, has very large power of 
recovery and remedy. The body may die from 
injuries inflicted, in spite of repentance, but the 
soul by vigorous effort may recover its lost ground. 
You cannot evade the fact, however, that the man 
who has traveled south when commanded to go 
north will be compelled by the very laws of his 
nature to cover all the miles from the point at 
which he diverged. 

Religion was by no means organized for the 
accommodation of evil-doers. The'love of God is 
infinite, and so is His pity. His patience and 
goodness consist in the fact that He has opened a 
way for your return, however far you may have 



44 HERALD SERMONS. 

wandered. To assert that you can insult His laws 
during a whole lifetime, and then, when you have 
no more time or opportunity to continue the insult, 
can suddenly become a good man, fitted to enjoy 
the glories of heaven, is repugnant to our know- 
ledge of the way in which the laws of the universe 
act in every-day life. 

I say, therefore, that religion is not a senti- 
mental mystery, which glosses over your wicked 
life when you know perfectly well that it ought 
not to be glossed over. On the other hand, it is 
the warning voice of a Father, who tells you that 
you must sow corn if you would reap corn, and 
that if you do not sow corn you will have no corn 
to eat. The religion of Christ states that in 
morals, as in mathematics, two and two make four, 
and that if you think otherwise no power in heaven 
or earth can make your books balance. 



HOUSE-BUILDING AND CHARACTER- 
BUILDING. 

" A workman that needeth not to be ashamed." — 2 Tim. ii. 15. 

When a child comes into this world he comes 
without any character at all. He is simply a bundle 
of latent energies, a fagot of possibilities, or a piece 
of white paper on which, as time goes on, he will 
write the history of a soul and demonstrate its 
success or failure. The science of heredity teaches 
us that he may have strong tendencies to either 
good or evil ; but when his reason puts the crown 
on his head, as Napoleon did at Notre Dame, he is 
in full command of himself and can settle his destiny 
beyond a peradventure. If he is long-sighted he 
will see that he must not become the creature of 
circumstance, but must bend circumstance to the 
accomplishment of a high, noble, and divine pur- 
pose. 

Religion comes to his aid and tells him, just as 
45 



46 HERALD SERMONS. 

an old man would tell a young man, that one 
course of life will in the long run, however enticing 
it may be at the beginning, produce misery both 
of body and mind, and that another course of life 
will in the long run produce satisfaction and hap- 
piness. That is the chief function of religion, and 
that is the only kind of religion which can right- 
fully claim his attention. It is a man's best friend, 
because it teaches him to seek his best good. Re- 
ligion is the science which tells us how to produce 
the highest results, and as such no man can afford 
to be indifferent to it. 

If you traverse the sea you need a compass and 
a chart. If you travel through a strange country 
you want a guide-book.. If you hope to attain 
eminence in any profession and to reap profit from 
it you must make yourself familiar with the fun- 
damental principles of that profession. For a 
precisely similar reason and with precisely the 
same end in view, you must know what you want 
to do and how it can be most easily done when 
you stand on the threshold of your career and look 
forward with hope. You want religion, but it 
must be a religion of common sense. 

House-building and character-building are gov- 



HOUSE- AND CHARACTER-BUILDING. 47 

erned by the same principles. In both cases the 
task is difficult — that is, if you are to have a house 
that will be convenient or a character that will 
prove satisfactory. If you slight your house you 
will never have what you want, and if you slight 
your character you will never become what you 
hope to be. There are pretty stern laws under- 
lying both structures, and it is better to take pains 
while building than to have pain after the work is 
completed. 

There is, however, one serious difference be- 
tween these two undertakings. If you build a 
house and don't like it, you can get rid of it, 
though perhaps at a loss ; but if you build a char- 
acter and don't like it, you will find yourself in 
very serious trouble. Your character is really 
yourself, and if you don't like yourself, when the 
time for careful examination arrives you will be 
compelled, either in this or in some other world, 
to take the whole thing down, even to the founda- 
tion-stones, and build all over again. 

The text is rather startling in its intimations. 
Think of yourself as standing on some lofty van- 
tage-ground of the future life, with eyes brightened 
by new powers of vision and a mind that sees 



48 HERALD SERMONS. 

critically and judges impartially ; think of yourself 
looking back on what you have done in this life 
with the consciousness that you have been a work- 
man that needeth not to be ashamed. God gave 
you the plan, and you built in accordance with it. 
You were wise enough to know that you knew 
very little, and so took your corner-stones from 
the divine quarry of the Sermon on the Mount. 
You were no bungler, but a master workman, and 
though your house is not perfect, still, it shows 
honest endeavor and the ambition to do the best 
you could. That is my idea of heaven, for heaven 
is within, not without. When a man has such 
feelings in his heart he is already in heaven, whether 
he lives in this world or in any other world. Such 
a man is accepted of God, whatever his color or 
his social position or his creed. 

Then, again, think of yourself awaking from the 
sleep of death, and, after becoming used to the 
new environment, looking back on your past life 
and recognizing the awful fact that it is a direful 
failure. The winds have beat against that house, 
and it fell, and great was the fall of it. You see 
what God did for you and how wretchedly you 
undid yourself. What regrets must torment you, 



HOUSE- AND CHARACTER-BUILDING. 49 

and how you will hate yourself! A life deliber- 
ately spoiled and despoiled, wasted, wrecked, and 
all because you had no plan, or, having one, built 
in defiance of it! That is my idea of hell, and I 
can conceive of no agony more poignant than for 
such a man to look from the face of a pitying 
Father to his own desperate failure amid the op- 
portunities of his mortal life. Hell is simply the 
displeasure of God mingled with your condemna- 
tion of yourself. Brimstone fires are nothing in 
comparison with the flames of remorse and self- 
reproach. 

Build your character just as you would build a 
home. Solid masonry and sound timber! The 
labor done by a workman that needeth not to be 
ashamed! God and Christ and the angels will 
then come and take up their abode with 3'ou, and 
when you step out of the earthly tabernacle you 
will be welcomed by the glorious company above. 



THOU SHALT NOT WORRY. 

" Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." — Matt. vi. 34. 

Christ was, above all things, practical. That 
was His marked characteristic, the one which 
especially endears Him to mankind, for it estab- 
lishes between us and Him the personal relations 
of teacher and pupil. I like to think of Him as a 
friend who has all the resources of wisdom at com- 
mand, who is for some reason interested in my 
welfare, who has furnished me with certain truths 
which I could hardly discover for myself and in 
which I can place as much confidence as the mari- 
ner on tempestuous seas does in the compass that 
guides him through storm and darkness. 

Some of the advice He has given is difficult to 
understand and more difficult to follow. The text 
is an illustration of this. If He tells us that the 
angels of God are never beyond hearing distance 
when we are in need of help, or if He declares 

50 



THOU SHALT NOT WORRY. 5 1 

that there is another life for which these few years 
are simply a preparation, and that we must so act 
to-day that we shall have no regrets in the great 
to-morrow, we can catch a glimpse of His meaning, 
for there is a mysterious something in our souls 
which corroborates His words. But when He as- 
sures us that in our daily lives we ought to face 
the present moment and do the present duty, not 
allowing ourselves to be over-anxious about what 
may happen during the day to come, it is neces- 
sary to think the matter over very carefully before 
we can see the principle which underlies His words. 
Surely He was well aware of the trials, troubles, 
sorrows, and uncertainties through which we pass, 
for they filled His own short career to the very 
brim. No man has ever suffered more than He 
did, and none has been pricked by as many thorns. 
And yet He calmly tells us to possess our souls in 
peace, not to anticipate the future, neither to worry 
about what may happen to-morrow ; but to bear 
as best we may whatever burden is on our shoulders 
and let the morrow take care of itself. He does 
not speak of this as the better policy to pursue, 
but as an imperative duty imposed by the laws of 
the universe and by the God who decreed them. 



52 HERALD SERMONS. 

What does He mean by this strange utterance? 
Perhaps by searching we may find out. 

Worry, to begin with, is useless. It produces 
no good result. On the contrary, it is utterly 
destructive in its nature. So far from, preparing 
you to overcome disaster, it renders you unfit to 
meet it. It debilitates the soul and robs you of 
the very strength which you pray for because you 
see it will be needed. To worry is to endure an 
agony before its time and so prolong your misery. 
God says, " You must suffer pain to-morrow," and 
you reply, "Then I will suffer it to-day also." 

Do not think I am forgetful. I know that com- 
ing events cast their shadows before, that one 
cannot laugh up to the moment when the clock 
strikes and the blow falls. The imagination is 
winged, and it flies into the future. Love thinks 
of the hour of separation which cannot long be 
postponed, and tears tremble on the eyelids not 
because of what is, but of what is to be. We 
should be not more, but less than human if this 
were not so. 

Suppose, however, that our faith was perfect. 
If our souls were in accord with the providence of 
God, if we really felt that a hand controls events 



THOU SHALT NOT WORRY. 53 

and that behind the hand is the heart of a Father ; 
that what we must bear He will give us strength 
to bear ; that if we are not masters of the situation, 
He is — would not such a faith quiet our restless- 
ness, and should we not resemble the Sea of Gali- 
lee after Christ said, "Peace, be still"? The 
element of worry would be well-nigh eliminated, 
and, with the feeling that whatever is is right, we 
should borrow nothing from the future, but simply 
bear the present sorrow. 

It is true religion that we need, and more of it. 
In our professed belief we have a God enthroned, 
but in our daily life we have a God dethroned. 
In our heart of hearts we do not have confidence 
in Him, but act as though there were no God at 
all. If we could climb to that high spiritual level, 
so far above our heads and well-nigh out of sight, 
on which Christ lived, we should be healthier in 
body, more vigorous in soul to meet the inevitable, 
more cheerful, happier, less restless, and immea- 
surably nobler. 

It is profitable for you to so far anticipate the 
effect of a given cause that you prepare to meet 
it ; but when yOu have done all that can be done, 
it is exceedingly unprofitable to so weaken yourself 



54 HERALD SERMONS. 

by worry that the coming sorrow is doubled in 
weight. As much as lies in your power — and it 
is a quality of character which admits of great 
development — live in to-day. Cultivate a quiet 
and peaceful frame of mind. He did it and was 
undisturbed by threatening circumstance, and you 
may follow afar off. What you are doing now 
calls for all your strength, and if there is more to 
follow then the additional strength will be given. 
God's providence is both wide and tender, and the 
more you trust in it, the sweeter will be your life, 
the brighter will be your hope, the fairer will be 
your general outlook, and the nearer will heaven 
seem to you. " Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof." 



WHY ARE WE PUNISHED? 

" There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one 
sinner that repenteth." — Luke xv. 10. 

What do we mean when we say that God 
punishes men? The word "punishment" is in 
some respects the most conspicuous in the theology 
of the past, and it occupies a very serious promi- 
nence in the theology of the present. 

When reading the sermons preached in olden 
days, punishment is so much more frequently met 
with than love that we have inherited certain ideas 
of God which make it rather difficult to speak of 
Him as our Father. The terrors of the Lord, as 
interpreted by the spiritual teachers of mankind, 
have introduced an element of fear into religion 
which has almost become a controlling motive, 
and yet every one of us knows that what we do 
through love is exceedingly better than what we 
do through fear. It is even safe to say that a re- 

55 



56 HERALD SERMONS. 

ligion of fear is a very low sort of religion, from 
which the uplifting and upholding influences 
which Christ brought into the world are entirely 
absent. 

If I understand the Master, He wished us to love 
God in much the way in which a child loves its 
mother, and to have the same confidence in Him 
that the child has in the protecting presence of its 
father. That is to say, the relation between us 
and Him is always paternal on His side and can 
never be otherwise, and should be filial on our 
side. No matter what your spiritual condition 
may be, whether you are given to works of charity 
or deeds of darkness, He is forever the same ; for 
in the one case He rejoices with you in your good- 
ness, and in the other He pities you in your bad- 
ness. If, like the prodigal, living on husks which 
the swine do eat, you thoughtfully come to the 
conclusion that your life is a mistake, and conclude 
to face the stars and walk that way, you can be 
absolutely sure that God has been sorry for you 
during every hour of dissipation, and will take you 
into the warm embrace of His sympathy and love 
when you feel the need of holier living. Men may 
turn from you, but God never. 



WHY ARE WE PUNISHED? S7 

And yet punishment is a frightful fact in every 
man's life. The world is almost sinking under its 
weight. Not a soul lives that does not bear some 
burden of that kind. There is more wailing than 
laughter on the planet, and regrets sharp as the 
sting of a hornet abundantly prove that our way 
is not God's way and that God's sovereignty is 
asserting itself. There is no happiness except in 
obedience, not even a scintilla, and just so long as 
we are wilful and selfish, so long we must take the 
consequences. 

But what purpose does this punishment sub- 
serve? Take a familiar illustration and perhaps 
we shall find enlightenment. You are a parent, 
but your child has gone wrong. That child is 
bone of your bone, made in your image. You 
rocked its cradle and held it to your bosom. But 
the little one has developed evil tendencies. You 
cannot approve of them ; on the other hand, you 
frown upon them. Your attitude toward the child 
and your attitude toward what he does are two 
very different things. You may punish, but not 
with wrath, for your eyes are filled with tears. 
What is your object in the punishment? Do you 
hate the child, and would you crush it because it 



58 HERALD SERMONS. 

has fallen into bad ways? Is it any pleasure to 
you to administer the physical rebuke? No; your 
heart is peculiarly tender toward that boy, and yet 
for his own sake you must teach him that certain 
things must not be done. You are severe, you 
are relentless ; but there is no other way to save 
him. He may think you a tyrant, and his eyes 
may flash with anger because you oppose his self- 
will, but has your love departed ? Would you not 
make great sacrifices for him? Does not your 
mother- heart yearn for the love which he refuses 
to give ? Yes ; you love while you punish, and 
though you dare not remit any measure of the 
punishment, the love seems to grow more intense ; 
love and grief are intermingled. In a word, you 
punish in order to reform, and the punishment is 
solely for the child's sake. 

Is not this also true with regard to our heavenly 
Father? You do Him the most grievous wrong 
when you think of Him as a being who can under 
any circumstances hate you. If you are the worst 
sinner in the world ; if justice chases you from one 
hiding-place to another because of your crimes ; if 
your old friends all curse you ; if your children 
turn their backs on you and shudder at the recol- 



WHY ARE WE PUNISHED? 59 

lection of your infamous deeds ; if there is no spot 
on the broad earth where you can find a resting- 
place — still, as truly as the stars shine above you 
at night and the sun by day, and neither the one 
nor the other is paled by your guilt, so truly does 
God Almighty pity you with a pity that is fathom- 
less and boundless, and so truly do the angels band 
together to draw you back into the paths of per- 
sonal purity and rectitude. 

Doubt everything else, but never doubt that 
you are being punished as you know you deserve 
to be, and you must reap the consequences of your 
misdeeds as you know you ought to ; but if you 
see that you have blundered, and if your punish- 
ment leads to such serious thinking that you would 
make your future different from your past, you 
will find the everlasting arm of God underneath 
you, and you will hear the voices of angels singing 
a welcome back to your better self. Poor fellow! 
You have been in hell, and everybody in heaven 
has been sorry for you. God has never for a 
moment hated you, and your own hands made the 
hell in which you lived. Your undoing was your 
own doing, not His. Your soul has been dark, 
but your own hands drew down the window-cur- 



60 HERALD SERMONS. 

tains and shut out the light. You have been your 
own executioner. 

If you see all this at some critical juncture in 
your experience, and if you recognize the fact 'that 
you have made a losing investment of yourself, 
and if you determine, even at the eleventh hour, 
to become a man, there can be no such rejoicing 
on earth as there will be in heaven. God's pity 
will be dissipated and His approval will take its 
place ; the dear ones who have watched your down- 
ward path will extend their hands to help you 
climb ; and there will come into your soul such a 
peace and satisfaction as will dull the memory of 
the old and dreary days. God sorrows with the 
sorrowing ; He pities the erring ; He loves from 
eternity to eternity. 



LOVE YOURSELF LAST. 

" He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." — Matt. x. 39. 

SELFISHNESS is the cause of nine tenths of the 
misery in the world and of nine tenths of the other 
tenth. 

If you carefully analyze this vice as it exhibits 
itself in your own life, you will see that it is closely 
allied to cruelty ; that is to say, you are willing to 
be cruel to some one in order to obtain a gratifi- 
cation for yourself. 

Selfishness is a despicable and demoralizing form 
of depravity. It is the cracked tire of the wheel 
of progress, the broken shaft in the engine of moral 
improvement, a kind of spiritual earthquake, which 
turns everything topsy-turvy and makes harmony, 
brotherliness, and true religion utterly impossible. 

An unselfish world has been the dream of poets 
and prophets for centuries. They saw the divine 
possibilities of human nature, the noble qualities 
61 



62 HERALD SERMONS. 

both intellectual and moral, with which we are 
endowed. They had visions of an earth that was 
both earth and heaven, of a race which boldly 
marched from the lowlands of base passion to live 
on the uplands, with the stars forever above it, 
unobscured by clouds. 

The millennial energy is driving us in that di- 
rection, but we make as slow progress as a man 
who climbs a mountain with a heavy burden on 
his shoulders. The instances of self-sacrifice and 
patriotism and philanthropy and large charity 
which we see give us a glimpse of the ethereal 
plateau which it is our manifest destiny to attain 
sometime, but as yet we are racked and torn and 
riven and disrupted by a curious greediness for 
ourselves and a persistent indifference to the fate 
of others. We feel no personal responsibility for 
the guilt or misery of our neighbors. We have 
enough of the grace of God to hope that every 
one may be content and happy, but not enough to 
compel us to help them to attain their desire. In 
a word, the genuine Christ spirit is not a strong 
factor either in our society or in our individual 
lives. Christ, who busied Himself in doing good, 
and whose teaching may be summed up in the 



LOVE YOURSELF LAST. 63 

injunction to think less of ourselves and more of 
others, is still a stranger to us, although we have 
known Him for nearly two thousand years. We 
believe more in the theology of the apostles than 
in the religion of the Lord. 

Let us think a moment. What do we mean by 
selfishness? Certainly not self-love in any true 
sense, because selfishness is not the building up 
of self, but the destruction of self. Indeed, there 
is very little self-love in the world. The man who 
is in love with himself is a poor sort of creature, 
who must be demented. We cannot love our- 
selves if we have any sense, for no one knows 
better than we do that we are not worthy of love. 
Selfishness, therefore, is not pure love of self, but 
an ignoble passion for grasping more than our 
share, regardless of the rights and claims of others. 
It indicates a criminal indifference whether any 
man enjoys himself or has the means of doing so, 
provided all our own wants are gratified. It means 
that brotherhood is a myth, and that if our table 
is well supplied our neighbor may starve, or if we 
keep ourselves from the commission of crime our 
fellow-men need not look to us for any help to 
resist temptation. We hold ourselves unrespon- 



64 HERALD SERMONS. 

sible for everything except our own personal 
condition. 

But, you say, if we were really appreciative of 
the suffering about us, life would not be worth 
living, and we should all have broken hearts if we 
literally bore one another's burdens. The answer 
is, the sooner our hearts are broken from such a 
cause the better. If it would be a very hell on 
earth to have a keen realization of the crimes and 
wretchedness of mankind, then let us live in that 
kind of hell until we can make it a heaven. 

You have no right to do anything to keep your- 
self from realizing the condition of others, for they 
and you belong to the same family ; and you have 
no right, in the sight of God, to eat your bread in 
peace if you know that some one is starving. What 
kind of a world are we making? Is it a God's 
world, a Christ's world, or a world filled with cruel 
demons — a world in which the chief purpose is to 
get everything and to give nothing? Why should 
we not suffer if others are suffering? 

Suppose that by some magic our selfishness were 
eliminated and a divine and pitying love should 
take its place ; suppose we were filled with a holy 
determination to give needed protection to every 



LOVE YOURSELF LAST. 65 

young man who now seeks in vain for the good 
cheer of an honest life, and to hold in our sisterly 
embrace every poor girl who is driven by despera- 
tion to an unholy career ; would the world be any 
the worse? 

Suppose the church should say, " We are too 
busy to talk about theology ; we will do that when 
we have eternity before us ; for the present we 
must get out the life-boats and save the tempest- 
tossed and shipwrecked;" what then? What 
then? Why, for the first time we should under- 
stand Christianity. The New Testament would 
become an open book and religion a blessed reality. 

Lose yourself and you will find yourself. Love 
yourself last and the stars will shine with a brighter 
beam. Save some one, give some one a share of 
your plenty, pity the poor and oppressed, let no 
day pass without a kindly word or a generous deed, 
and angels will come and visit you, for you will be 
doing God's work in God's way. If you wish to 
go to heaven in the hereafter, you must put a bit 
of heaven into some forlorn life here. 



A BLESSED FAITH. 

" And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me 
again." — Rev. x. 8. 

Before the first voyage of Columbus this whole 
hemisphere was to the people of Spain a myth, a 
dream, a possible everything, but a practical noth- 
ing. It was a very agreeable subject for discussion 
among scholars, and they perhaps found good 
reasons both for believing and for disbelieving in 
its existence. As a theory this Western land oc- 
cupied a more or less prominent position in all the 
universities of Europe, and a good deal of serious 
thought was devoted to it by the learned. But if 
one of the merchants of Madrid had been asked to 
invest his money in some commercial venture the 
profits of which depended upon the discovery of 
what are now known as the two Americas, he would 
have laughed at the scheme as the financial opera- 
tion of a madman. 

66 



A BLESSED FAITH. 67 

When, however, Columbus returned from that 
voyage with the trophies he had gathered, and 
proved beyond the reach of a doubt that there was 
a great stretch of territory on this side of the At- 
lantic to balance an equal extent of land on the 
other side, scholarship was hushed into admiring- 
silence and merchants were eager to invest whole 
fortunes in speculation. 

It is impossible for a cautious man to make 
practical use of a statement which may or may not 
be true. This rule, which is so constantly illus- 
trated in our every-day business life, is equally 
applicable to what concerns us spiritually. Do 
you have grave misgivings as to whether there is 
any heaven from which a voice can come to your 
soul? Or, believing in some remote region where 
the spirits of the departed dwell, do you doubt 
their ability either to communicate with you or to 
influence you ? Then you are in the position of 
the Madrid merchant who could not invest money 
in a country whose existence he knew nothing 
about. Speaking with perfect frankness, we may 
declare that this life is all you have practically, for 
you neither realize the future nor are you in any 
way affected by it. 



68 HERALD SERMONS. 

On the other hand, suppose you are convinced 
— as firmly as Columbus was when he lifted his 
eyes from the acres of seaweed that floated by and 
saw the thin line of land on the horizon's edge — 
that heaven is literally within arm's-length ; that 
Jacob's ladder is not a myth, but a fact ; that in 
every man's life there is just such a ladder, and 
that messengers are constantly ascending and de- 
scending; what results would naturally follow? 
You would be as willing to make use of these 
truths for your spiritual comfort, sustenance, and 
encouragement as the Madrid merchant was to in- 
vest his money when the Spanish caravels came to 
anchor with their treasure in the hold. 

What you need, therefore, to make you in every 
way larger and happier is a strong faith in God's 
actual nearness. So long as He is an inaccessible 
possibility, a being who thunders from Sinai's 
hoary summit, a taskmaster who has given you 
your day's work to do and will damn you at even- 
tide unless it is wholly done and done as ordered, 
so long will your soul be lonely and your love of 
holy things burn like a flickering taper, so long 
will your religion have in it a demoralizing element 
of fear, and so long will your prayers represent a 



A BLESSED FAITH. 69 

perfunctory service without heart or peace of mind 
or the ecstasy of a blessed communion. 

But when God is to your soul what the sunshine 
is to the wheat-field or the dewdrops are to the 
flowers, when you not only know that He is, but 
that. He is your refuge and strength in time of 
trouble, that His love for you is beyond all other 
loves, that His sympathy and pity are deeper than 
those of your closest friends — then you know what 
the peace that passeth understanding means, and 
whatever ills may befall you, you know beyond all 
peradventure that a mighty hand is leading; you 
and an almighty arm will defend you. 

The joy of such a faith is simply unspeakable. 
What wealth cannot bestow it generously gives. 
You may be despondent, but you are not without 
hope. You may weep, but your tears are un- 
mingled with despair. Trials may come and your 
shoulders grow weary of the heavy burden, but 
you have something, a mysterious and transfigur- 
ing something within, which distrust and doubt, 
though in the environment of Paradise, cannot 
enjoy. 

True religion, the religion which holds this life 
in one hand and immortality in the other, is the 



JO HERALD SERMONS. 

best fortune that ever fell to the lot of mortal man. 
Assent to whatever creed you will, go to whatever 
church you please, worship God with pomp and 
ceremony or in the utter simplicity which disdains 
all forms — these are matters of secondary conse- 
quence ; they are only incidents which depend on 
your temperament or your surroundings. They 
are nothing, absolutely nothing, and in their use 
you should have entire personal freedom. But 
underneath all other things you must have that 
kind of religion which enables you to say, " And 
the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto 
me again ; " for that, and that alone, will satisfy 
the longings of the soul, fit your frail body with 
divine armor for the battle of life, and prepare you 
for that eternity in which worship is neither form 
nor ceremonial, but only love — pure, unselfish, 
divine love. 



SUDDEN DEATH. 

"Asa thief in the night."— 2 Pet. iii. io. 

THIS is a vivid, almost a startling, illustration of 
the way in which the inevitable sometimes steals 
upon us. 

After what manner does the thief come at night ? 
Is it not with exceeding stealth, that he may cause 
no alarm, and with slippered feet and bated breath 
and cunning silence? 

In like manner Death treads softly until he is 
close at hand. In many cases it is not known that 
he is in the vicinity until he lays his hand on some 
one's shoulder and whispers, "Come!" Some- 
times he clasps the heart with his icy fingers, and 
it at once ceases to beat, just as the old clock 
ceases to tick when you lay hold of the pendulum. 
At other times a loved one lies on his couch for a 
few days, never dreaming that his work is done, 
but rather hoping that the morning will find him 

7i 



J2 HERALD SERMONS. 

ready to take up his task. Then all at once there 
are anxious faces and tearful eyes, and before he 
can realize the situation his soul has broken away 
from the bonds of mortality and begins its flight 
into the upper air. 

How would you wish to die if the matter were 
left to your personal decision? It is a subject on 
which every one has bestowed more or less thought, 
though few of us, perhaps, have reached a definite 
conclusion. With another and a better world in 
constant view, with the full consciousness that on 
the farther shore you will have an environment far 
superior to that afforded by the present life, with 
a profound faith that dear ones over there are 
waiting for you, what seems the most desirable 
means of exit from the present and of entrance 
into the future? 

The ideal death is undoubtedly that of old age. 
If we had perfect bodies, unhampered by inherited 
weaknesses, we should not die in youth or middle 
life, but should retain our faculties to the last, and 
take our leave as the sun does when he sinks 
behind the hills. If the laws of nature were tri- 
umphant, if our ancestors had not left their diseases 
as well as their property to us as heirs, we might 



SUDDEN DEATH. 73 

be hale and strong until the machinery gave way. 
That is the kind of life and death indicated by the 
plan of God, but that plan has been sadly interfered 
with. Such a life, rich and healthy to the last, 
and such a death, simply falling asleep through 
weariness and waking up in heaven, are rarely 
seen. 

Many people bewail the sudden departure of 
loved ones, and regard it as an addition to the 
bereavement; but this is a mistake. We must 
think of ourselves less and of them more. If one 
is to take a journey and the preparation for it is 
painful, then the quicker the preparation is made, 
the better for us all. When we must say good-by, 
a hand- shake is better than a prolonged farewell. 
If one is called away by a voice which cannot be 
disobeyed, why should we selfishly hold him in a 
lingering embrace when lingering means suffering 
for him? 

To enable us to endure the death of some mem- 
ber of our household with sorrowful serenity, we 
need a stronger faith in two facts ; after that, death 
is a mere incident in the career of a soul, and, 
though we may weep, we shall also rejoice at the 
good fortune which has come to the dear one. 



74 HERALD SERMONS. 

First, we must be sure that the end has not come 
and never will come ; that all that has occurred is 
a change of residence, nothing more. The loss is 
ours, the gain is theirs. They are being congratu- 
lated on their arrival at the moment when we are 
in tears over their departure. They have more 
friends on the other side than they could have 
here, for this life is made up of many streams, but 
the other life is the ocean into which all streams 
flow. If, therefore, heaven and earth are equal 
realities to us, we may sigh and weep ; but be- 
neath our sighs and tears we shall feel a sense of 
relief that, though physical suffering may still come 
to us, none can reach them forevermore. 

Second, such a faith must rest on the solid con- 
viction that death makes no change in affection or 
character. To-morrow we shall be ourselves just 
as we are to-day, and there can never come a time 
when we shall suffer loss of personal identity. 

Let us take a strong illustration. We have here 
a bottle of perfume with an atomizer affixed. 
That body of perfume occupies a definite space 
and has definite characteristics ; it has, so to speak, 
an individuality. 

In like manner a man has definite peculiarities 



SUDDEN DEATH. 75 

and occupies a definite space. He is himself alone 
and cannot share his identity with any other hu- 
man being. If by miracle he were compelled to 
do this, he would be that much less than himself 
and that much nearer to a nonentity. 

Now squeeze the bulb and continue to do so 
until the bottle is empty. What has happened? 
The entire body of perfume is dissipated. Not an 
atom has been destroyed, because all atoms are 
indestructible, but you have so scattered the per- 
fume that no power can gather those particles 
together again. The individuality is gone forever, 
and, though the atoms still live, they live as atoms 
only, not as an aggregated mass of atoms making 
a given quantity of perfume. 

Some will tell us that that is what occurs to us 
at death. We are dissipated among the forces of 
the universe — are immortal, to be sure, but im- 
mortal only as force, not as individuals. Christ 
taught otherwise ; namely, that we are personalities 
and shall remain such to the end of the world, that 
death is not our atomizer and has no power what- 
ever over character. 

Then we need not fear death, but should be glad 
for those who have got away from the body. They 



76 HERALD SERMONS. 

are over yonder, and our faces are turned in the 
same direction. Let death come how it will, it 
cannot disturb us. If it comes suddenly, all the 
better, for we shall be saved the pain of lingering 
illness. Let it all be as God decrees, and as for 
us, we will be ready for the journey whenever we 
are summoned. 



WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? 

" Ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending 
and descending upon the Son of man."— John i. 51. 

A CLERGYMAN of this city, eloquent and well 
beloved, recently discoursed on some of the prob- 
able occupations of the soul after death. 

It may be regarded as a sign of the times that 
no subjects excite a wider popular interest than 
those which refer to what may possibly happen to 
us after the cemetery gate is closed. There has 
hardly been an age in the history of the race when 
a rational faith in the verities of religion has had 
a stronger hold than now, or when the yearning 
after some knowledge of the future was more 
eager or more anxious. 

It sometimes seems as though the world had 
just waked up to the fact that the circumference 
of another life touches the circumference of this 

77 



78 HERALD SERMONS. 

life, and that those who leave us with a whispered 
" good-night " will soon greet us with a joyful 
" good-morning " as we meet on the other shore. 

What, then, was our surprise when this eloquent 
preacher was taken to task for his utterances, on 
the ground that our occupations in the Beyond 
are a matter of " idle speculation " for which there 
is "no basis of knowledge"! Then followed the 
curious assertion, " Nobody has ever come back 
from the other world to tell the story of his ex- 
periences there." 

Let us look at this subject very broadly for a 
few minutes. 

" Idle speculation " for which there is " no basis 
of knowledge" ! On the contrary, speculation of 
this kind seems to me to be spiritually profitable, 
and the basis of knowledge is both wide and ample. 
I say this not in the spirit of controversy, but with 
the desire to afford comfort to the bereaved. God 
has taken our dear ones ; for a time we are sepa- 
rated from them ; but our love remains undimin- 
ished, while our hope of reunion, like the candle 
on the altar of certain churches, is kept aflame by 
day and night. Is it possible that the Lord has 
denied us the privilege of imagining their environ- 



WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? 79 

ment, after assuring us that eye hath not seen nor 
heart conceived the happiness by which He has 
surrounded them ? Do we contravene any one of 
His injunctions when with tearful memory we 
recall the past, and then, in glorious anticipation 
based on His promise, dream sweet dreams of 
that home not made with hands, eternal and in 
the heavens ? If He has endowed us with imagina- 
tion, shall it halt when it reaches the threshold of 
pearl, and shall we be driven back to a grief unil- 
lumined by a single glimpse of the cloudless sky 
which bends above the departed? Nay, is it not 
a prerogative which makes us calm and resigned 
to think and think what they are doing beyond 
the stars, and wonder whether they " hold us in 
full survey," until wonder becomes faith, and faith 
chases our sighs away and brightens our pathway 
as with a vision of glory ? 

" Nobody has ever come back from the other 
world to tell the story of his experiences there." 
Then close your Bible and clasp it with a clasp, 
for it has strangely misled us. Never look at it 
more nor trust it again, for its pages are a snare 
and a deceit. It opens with the declaration that 
God held vocal communication with man, and it 



80 HERALD SERMONS. 

ends with a description of the Celestial City, which 
makes the nerves tingle with gratitude, while 
bereavement and sorrow cry out with joy. The 
imagination is stimulated by the vision which John 
saw as he sat on the cold rocks of Patmos, and if 
it pursues its unwearied flight to this heaven of 
Revelation, will the Lord frown in disapproval? 

Nobody has ever come back? Will the Chris- 
tian say that? Dare he thus throw doubts over 
the record and impugn the authority of the 
record-writers ? If any one peculiarity of the Bible 
stands conspicuous, it is the constant reiteration of 
the nearness of heaven to earth and the repeated 
assertion that angels have literally visited the 
habitations of men. Will you throw down the 
ladder of Jacob, by means of which heavenly beings 
ascended and descended? Did Jacob feel that 
he was engaged in " idle speculation," and what 
would have been his reply to the assertion that 
" nobody has ever come back from the other 
world " ? 

Moreover, did not Christ solemnly pledge Him- 
self to return for the comfort of His followers? 
Did He indulge in rhetorical license in that hour 



WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? 8 1 

of upheaval and utter weariness? Did He en- 
courage the disciples by a mere figure of speech, 
or did He speak with the gravity of knowledge 
and with the consciousness that He could keep 
that pledge? 

In my judgment there is no voice which can so 
effectually whisper, " Peace, be still," to the 
troubled heart as the voice of the imagination 
which pictures our loved ones as looking earthward 
while we look heavenward. Let the picture be as 
vivid as you can make it ; if possible, think of the 
other home as more real than this one ; forever 
bear in mind the glorious truth that this life is the 
portico of the temple, and the other life the temple 
itself; shade your eyes, that perchance you may 
catch a glimpse of the white-robed multitude 
beyond the threshold curtained by death; listen, 
that mayhap you may hear their voices as they 
sing of the goodness of the Lord. Your own, from 
whom you have parted, are in that throng, and it 
will lighten your pathway, bring the ruddy color 
back to your cheek, the old smile to your lips, 
and enable you to say, " Thy will be done," if with 
reverent speculation your thoughts wander from 



82 HERALD SERMONS. 

the portico in which you stand to the temple in 
which they dwell. 

Think of heaven as much as you will, and let 
there be no limit to your thinking. Your thoughts 
will irradiate the darkness of this life and prepare 
you for that hour when, with open arms, you shall 
be welcomed on the other shore. 



BROKEN HEARTS. 

" The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart." — 
Ps. xxxiv. 18. 

Certainly no one needs the help of the Lord 
more than these, and it is a great privilege to 
know that there is somewhere an " everlasting 
arm " upon which they can certainly rely in time 
of trouble. 

The most discouraging fact in life is that when 
we call loudest for friends they are not often 
within hearing distance. If we are not in want of 
them they are more numerous than we can count, 
but when we are sinking beneath the waters and 
stretch out imploring hands, there is no one near 
to render assistance. 

The great sorrows of life must be borne alone, 
for no one who has not himself trodden the wine- 
press of a like experience can say the word we 
need to have said or do the kindly deed we need 

83 



84 HERALD SERMONS. 

to have done. This is a mysterious element in 
God's providence which it is hard to understand. 
You may not have company in your Gethsemane, 
unless it be the companionship of the angels and 
of Him who sends them. 

Broken hearts! Are there any? Perhaps not 
many if the words are used in a literal sense. We 
may well thank Heaven that it is so. There is a 
certain buoyancy, a certain lifting power, in human 
nature which makes utter hopelessness impossible, 
except in rare instances. A kind of optimism 
creeps into the soul just as a child creeps into its 
weeping mother's arms, and as the child forces a 
smile from the mother, so this dim prophecy that 
" at eventime it shall be light " sends its ray of 
hope into the darkness that environs us. We find 
it very difficult to wholly despair, for heart-beats 
have a sort of good cheer in them when the 
shadows are deepest. 

But it is strangely true that there is a very seri- 
ous significance in the words "broken hearts." 
Life is sprinkled with disappointments from youth 
to age. The dreams of earlier times have not 
come true, and hardly one of us is to-day either 
what or where he expected to be. The wedding 



BROKEN HEARTS. 85 

march has changed into an echo, and its glad vi- 
brations scarcely reach our ears. The riches we 
longed for have not come, and our ships are still 
at sea. The plans we made have somehow gone 
astray, and the children for whom we would have 
made any sacrifice have been called to heaven. 
Changes have come like pitiless tornadoes and torn 
up by the roots many of our most cherished desires. 
Sickness, struggle, bereavement, poverty, like ma- 
lignant fairies, have waved their wands over us, 
and we scarcely recognize ourselves. 

These are stern facts, and they cannot be gain- 
said. Look back through the corridor of time and 
see yourself as you were at twenty. What ex- 
periences you have passed through! They have 
left their mark on your face, in your gait, and in 
your conversation. You have been plowed, and 
the furrows tell how deep the plow struck. 

What shall we say, then? That there is no 
God ? Nay ; rather that there must be a God, or 
matters would not turn out as they have done. Is 
life so full of bitterness that it is not worth living? 
Nay ; rather, life is a painful means to a joyful end. 
A hard lesson has been set us and it must be 
learned. There was never yet a sorrow which 



S6 HERALD SERMONS. 

was not a stepping-stone to higher things, and 
never yet fell a tear which did not bring heaven 
nearer. It is the evident intention of God that 
they shall serve these purposes, and the mission of 
religion is to keep us constantly mindful of that 
fact. 

The sorrowing ones of earth are specially near 
to the Father, and struggling souls are objects of 
His special solicitude. It is hard for us to see His 
face at such times, for our tears are like clouds 
that hide the sun ; but as the sun is surely behind 
the clouds, so is His face behind our tears. While 
it is a solemn and an awful truth that perfect sym- 
pathy and efficient helpfulness cannot be found 
elsewhere, it is a glorious certainty that both can 
be found in Him. 

What consolation to know that the Almighty is 
not far off, that He is neither a stranger to our 
miseries nor indifferent while we fight the good 
fight! Even when it seems as though He had 
deserted and left us to our fate, the rustling of 
angel wings may be heard, and the prayer of 
beseeching faith brings a calm into the soul as 
though He had whispered, " Peace, be still." 

Broken hearts! Travelers weary and worn! 



BROKEN HEARTS. &J 

Sailors clinging desperately to a wreck! Soldiers 
wounded almost unto death! Homes made deso- 
late by the invasions of death ! Sighs borne on 
every breeze and disappointed hopes scattered as 
thick " as leaves in Vallombrosa " ! 

Yes, this is all true. It is the burden we bear 
— the burden we must bear. But be of good 
cheer; heaven, the end of the journey, is not far 
off. The minarets are glistening in the sunshine, 
and once there, all will be peace. If we have the 
courage to sa}^ "Thy will be done" in this life, 
we shall look back in the next life and see, to our 
surprise, that all was for the best, that God was 
with us as we toiled along the upward steep, His 
arm underneath us, His messengers lifting us over 
the rough places. We must bear our lot bravely, 
in faith that He is nigh unto them that are of a 
broken heart, and by and by there will be great 
rejoicing. 



COMMUNE WITH YOURSELF. 

" Enter into thy closet, and . . . shut thy door." — Matt. vi. 6. 

Very few men put themselves under a micro- 
scope and look at their souls with the sharp eye 
of critical analysis. 

Self-examination is a prime duty, but a duty 
which we either neglect altogether or perform with 
reluctance. 

The consequence is that a great many of us have 
yet to make our own acquaintance. 

To use a blundering bit of rhetoric in order to 
illustrate this statement, our estimate of ourselves 
is so different from what we really are that we 
could pass ourselves on the highway without a nod 
of recognition. 

If we knew ourselves thoroughly we should 
work with more economy of energy and to far 
better purpose. 



COMMUNE WITH YOURSELF. 89 

If we knew what we are best adapted to do, 
and had an inventory of the mental and moral 
material in our possession to do it with, there 
would be fewer sighs and less heartbreaking. 

Calm, quiet, relentless self-examination, how- 
ever, is the most irksome task which we ever set 
ourselves, and we gladly avail ourselves of every 
excuse to avoid it. 

The simple truth is, we have a lurking suspicion 
that we are not as large or as faithful or as strong 
or as noble as we like to think ourselves, and we 
rather fear to look into the matter lest our sus- 
picions should be corroborated. 

We enjoy the flattery or the impulsive praise of 
our friends, and try to persuade ourselves that the 
praise or the flattery is deserved. 

In a word, it is a universal fault that we prefer 
to see ourselves through a magnifying-glass, and 
have no desire to know the exact truth. 

When a contractor undertakes to build a house, 
his first business is to find out whether the neces- 
sary timber and stone are within reach. He has 
the plan of the house always in mind and so knows 
what he must do and what he has to do it with. 
Each of his laborers has a tool-chest, and if any 



go HERALD SERMONS. 

one should apply for work not having the proper 
tools or not knowing how to use them, he would 
be treated with scornful contempt. In practical 
life, when one wishes to earn his living he ihust 
know his trade and have at hand the instruments 
which alone can make him an available artisan. 
Nothing could be more absurd than for a man to 
apply for work as a carpenter or mason who is 
ignorant of his ability to do what he is to be paid 
wages for doing. 

The same rule applies when we are engaged in 
building a character. The wise man is a student. 
He knows what elements go to make up a char- 
acter and whether he is in possession of those ele- 
ments, or if not, whether it is possible to develop 
them and whether a character is worth the sacri- 
fices which must be made in order to construct it. 
All this self-examination is his equipment, and 
when he has reached his conclusion? he can work 
intelligently and successfully. 

If he is a foolish man — and most of us are foolish 
in this respect — he neither knows much about the 
material in his own soul with which he is to do 
his work, nor the plan according to which he is to 
shape his life, and as a consequence has no defi- 



COMMUNE WITH YOURSELF. 91 

niteness of purpose and wastes his energies ; for if 
he begins with ignorance he is apt to end with dis- 
appointment. 

See the wrecked lives scattered along the shores 
of time ! What more pathetic picture can be con- 
ceived than that of a man who has made the worst 
of himself? His early hopes and ambitions, like 
the timbers of a stranded vessel, lie bleaching in 
the sun. The waves that break on the beach sound 
like a dirge, and you can hear in the air the tolling 
of bells. Why has this misfortune befallen? In 
most cases because he had no high aim and was 
governed by impulse rather than conviction. If 
he had known himself more accurately his life 
would not be the tragedy it is. 

What can we do, then, to keep ourselves from 
making these fatal mistakes? Here is a very 
practical question. The clergy will tell you to 
"get religion." But religion is not a thing to be 
plucked from a tree like peaches. True, you must 
have religion, but where is it and what is it? 

A very simple rule will unfold the great secret. 
Acquire the habit of self-communion and every- 
thing else will follow. Spend thirty minutes every 
day in the silence of your own chamber, talking to 



92 HERALD SERMONS. 

your soul about the great concerns of life, and it 
will not be long before you have God to keep you 
company. Quiet, restful contemplation is more 
magical than magic itself. It is utterly impossible 
for a man to think about himself for half an hour 
without becoming ashamed of himself, and shame 
after a little will transmute itself into resolution. 
Look over your purposes and motives critically 
and impartially ; shut out the world and unfold 
yourself to yourself. Examine your hopes and 
fears, coming to a deliberate judgment concerning 
their value, and you will find sooner or later that 
invisible beings, " who walk the earth both when 
we wake and when we sleep," are your welcome 
companions. There is nothing so nearly omnipo- 
tent, so transfiguring, nothing that can so quickly 
bring you self-control, contentment, and the con- 
sciousness of God's presence in your life, as quiet 
self-examination in solitude. You will find it a 
Jacob's ladder, up which you daily climb to heaven. 



IS FAITH OMNIPOTENT? 

" If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that be- 
lieveth." — Mark ix. 23. 

The incident referred to is not merely remark- 
able, but startling ; for it sets us to thinking along 
unusual lines. We very naturally ask whether 
Jesus meant all He said, or whether the expression 
used, " All things are possible to him that be- 
lieveth," was merely rhetorical and intended as a 
severe rebuke of the skepticism which prevailed 
among the higher classes and was reflected in the 
lower. It is evident that the little audience which 
had gathered on the occasion were astounded at 
the utterance, and still more astounded at the 
complete cure which immediately followed it. 

That same incredulity has prevailed during the 
last nineteen centuries, and it is certain that if the 
Lord should reappear and repeat His words and 
His miracle, we should be torn by bewildering 

93 



94 HERALD SERMONS. 

doubts and declare that His statement was opposed 
to the scientific knowledge of our time. We could 
no more accept it as the revelation of a law higher 
than the physical laws with which we are' ac- 
quainted than did the two or three learned Phari- 
sees who looked askance at one another and said, in 
the language of a shrug, that Jesus was simply an 
honest enthusiast, ignorant of the inexorable forces 
which govern the material universe. 

Suppose we spend a moment in asking what 
Jesus could have intended to convey to His hearers 
by the phrase, " All things are possible to him that 
believeth." It is clear that He used no figure of 
speech, but told what He regarded as a literal 
truth. He was either mistaken in judgment or we 
have done ourselves an injury in not accepting 
His statement and making it a factor in our lives. 

In the general opinion of our day, — and it is a 
day of brilliant scientific achievement and wonder- 
fully successful research, — the body controls the 
mind far more than the mind controls the body. 
Jesus declared, however, that the mind is the im- 
perator, and that even our physical functions, our 
health as well as the measure of happiness we en- 
joy, depend very largely on what we believe or do 



IS FAITH OMNIPOTENT? 95 

not believe ; in other words, that a man is what his 
mind makes him rather than what his body makes 
him. A good thought, according to the revelation 
of the Lord, is better than a powerful drug. While 
not denying that the world is filled with physical 
disorders and derangements, He intimates that we 
must seek for the cause of evil in the hearts of 
men, and allows us to infer that if our thinking 
were true and our feelings pure, or, to state the 
matter in a different way, if we lived closer to God 
and regarded Him as an actual rather than a theo- 
logical Father, we should have better bodies as 
well as more wholesome souls. Diseases are the 
consequence of conditions of mind, and when the 
mistakes of the mind are rectified the ailments of 
the body will be cured. 

At first we turn aside from such a theory as 
irrational and unpractical. Science arches its 
eyebrows and wonders how long mere dreamers 
will impose on the populace. Religious folk at- 
tempt to explain the words of Jesus in some odd 
fashion that is unsatisfactory to themselves and to 
everybody else. But there stands the statement, 
firm, inflexible, and imperative. 

On second thought, we get a faint glimpse of 



96 HERALD SERMONS. 

something that makes us tremulous. It is true, 
after all, that some maladies have been cured by 
the remedial agency of faith. We can no longer 
sneer, for the facts are not to be denied. Even 
the family of Thomas has examined them and been 
forced to admit them. A poor creature hobbles 
on his crutches to the shrine that contains a sacred 
relic, and in a few moments leaves the crutches 
behind and goes home whole. Was the cure 
effected by a miracle? Was the relic the prime 
cause of it? Not at all. He simply had the 
miracle-working power within himself, and the 
relic roused it into activity. He believed, and that 
unusual condition of his mind started the hitherto 
dormant forces of his body, and he became a well 
man. It was the thought in his mind, the feeling 
in his heart, that ministered unto him, and he sud- 
denly discovered — as suddenly as though the 
heavens had opened and an angel had descended 
to make the announcement — that Jesus did not 
indulge in hyperbole, but stated the simple, un- 
varnished truth that " all things are possible to 
him that believeth." 

The best parts of a man are his brain and his 
heart. If these are wrong the whole man is wrong, 



IS FAITH OMNIPOTENT? 97 

and if these are right the whole man is in a posi- 
tion to acquire health or to keep it. Diseases, 
many of them, are the consequence of mental con- 
ditions, and curative medication is to be found in 
nobler thoughts and feelings rather than in opiates 
and stimulants. 

If we turn from body to soul, what a magnificent 
prospect opens before us! Faith is the food that 
furnishes strength ; doubt is the chronic indigestion 
that makes us weak and despondent. There is no 
despair when we can see. the face of God by look- 
ing heavenward. Give us the globe for a footstool 
and a constellation for a chariot, satisfy every 
craving of physical appetite and every mental 
aspiration, but deny us any measure of faith, and 
the sun shines in vain, for the cloud within darkens 
the whole landscape of life. Better faith with 
nothing than doubt with everything. By him who 
believes the mountains are removed, the valleys 
are filled up, the crooked ways are made straight. 
He travels heavenward with a grateful heart, ac- 
companied by a " cloud of witnesses," who guard 
him night and day. 



VIRTUE IS CONTAGIOUS. 

" Let him do likewise." — Luke iii. n. 

SOME one has said that if he were able to create 
a world he would make virtue contagious instead 
of vice. 

A small degree of observation will show that his 
efforts in this direction would not be necessary, for 
the Lord has already done so. 

It is not as bad a world as the pessimist would 
have us think ; for the general trend of things is 
toward the good and not toward the evil ; and if 
you look into the matter carefully you will find 
that what you call contagion inheres in the pure 
and noble quite as much as in the impure and 
ignoble. If it be true that flaunted and successful 
vice allures a great many, it is also true that an 
honest and knightly life does the same thing. 

The career of a business man who brushes aside 
the restraints of moral principle, who is little more 

98 



VIRTUE IS CONTAGIOUS. 99 

than a highwayman at heart, and who boldly robs, 
under cover of law, until he counts his millions, is 
certainly very demoralizing. No one may measure 
the extent of its unhappy influence. It is startling 
and dazzling and enticing. A proportion of our 
youth become bewildered as they look upon it, 
and forgetting that there is a moral law which 
forces a man to pay his debts either before death 
or after, they pursue the tactics of their idol. 
There is undoubtedly an appealing inspiration in 
the life of even the wildest adventurer who defies 
fate, challenges the world, and by dint of audacity, 
if not of courage, achieves what he calls success. 
I have no inclination, therefore, to ignore the fact 
that there is contagion in a life which is brilliant, 
even though it be at the same time criminal. 

But I insist that there is just as much contagion 
in a good deed as in a bad one — that the holiness 
of one life conveys itself into another life and pro- 
duces the same results there. 

In physical experiences the agent of communi- 
cation is a germ or a microbe ; in spiritual experi- 
ences it is an idea. I have heard physicians say 
that the contagiousness of a disease depends largely 
on circumstances. If you are in a thoroughly 

L.ofC 



IOO HERALD SERMONS. 

healthy condition your system closes every door 
and the germ cannot enter; you enjoy absolute 
immunity from danger. If, on the contrary, you 
are susceptible or predisposed to the malady/ then 
the germ takes root and you become ill. Whether 
or not you catch the disease is determined by the 
weakness or strength of your own body. Nurses 
may watch over the dying and never feel the effects 
of the ailment which saps the life of the sufferer. 

It is the same in the moral world. Contagion 
there depends on yourself also, and to a far greater 
extent. If you lack spiritual strength and ambi- 
tion, if your sense of honor is only slightly de- 
veloped, if your self-respect is at a low ebb, then 
the example of the man who wins a fortune by 
nefarious means — like the microbe of typhoid — 
finds a lodgment in your soul, is cherished and 
multiplied by its environment, until at last immo- 
rality has the resistless sweep of a blizzard and 
tears up by the roots every heavenly and every 
manly aspiration. 

If you had impregnable uprightness of character, 
if nefarious methods were abhorrent to you, there 
would be no attractiveness in vicious deeds, and 
they would have no more alluring power than the 



VIRTUE IS CONTAGIOUS. IOI 

fire has, which may coax you to thrust your hand 
into it, but which coaxes in vain. 

There is contagion in goodness, provided you 
are in a condition to receive it. A grand and 
glorious life rouses you to imitation. The reputa- 
tion achieved by honest methods so affects us that 
we build a monument to the man who possesses it 
and tell our boys to go and do likewise. I do not 
believe that the influence of a pure life can be 
reckoned, so far-reaching, so inspiring, is it. It is 
said that the pregnant wives of the Athenians used 
to spend hours gazing at some beautiful statue, in 
the belief that something of its beauty would be 
transferred to the child that was coming into the 
world. Beauty was contagious, and the little one, 
slumbering amid the mysteries of a new life, 
caught it. 

When Father Damien died among the lepers of 
the Sandwich Islands his heroism and self-sacrifice 
were so contagious that scores of applicants prayed 
for the privilege of continuing his work, with the 
certainty of death as the result. Such was the 
influence of his lonely, saintly, and godlike mission 
that it was considered a boon to be immured within 
those leprous walls and to fill at last a leper's grave. 



102 HERALD SERMONS. 

It is a mistake to talk of the contagiousness of 
vice and to ignore that of virtue. This would be 
a queer world if one could catch the impulse to 
evil, but not the impulse to good. It may serve 
the purpose of the orator who seeks a telling period 
to tell us this, if he is willing to sacrifice truth to 
rhetoric, but the stern and glorious facts give an 
emphatic denial to the statement. Mankind are 
nobler and truer and more moral than ever before. 
Public opinion is more generous and more just. 
We have a larger faith than our fathers, and more 
true religion than has heretofore been found on 
the planet. Why is this? Simply and only be- 
cause truth and honesty and purity and all the 
nobler qualities of character are contagious, and 
because the contagion of vice is growing less dan- 
gerous year by year. 

It is safe to conclude that, after all, this is God's 
world. For that reason the tide of righteousness 
should be on the flood, while the tide of vice should 
be on the ebb, and a little observation will show 
that this is true. 



WHAT IS IT TO DIE? 

" To die is gain." — Phil. i. 21. 

One must think a long time, and think very 
seriously, before he can see any truth in that re- 
markable statement. He must continue to think, 
and do so with a much broader view of life and of 
the hereafter than is usual, before he can agree 
with the apostle. 

We all believe, in a general and vague sort of 
way, that it is better to die than to live under cer- 
tain distressful circumstances, but whether we, 
under like circumstances, should think so for our- 
selves is a problem about which there is consider- 
able doubt. 

God has implanted in us a love of life which is 
strong enough to make us avaricious of the very 
last possible day. If that universal dread of death 
were less strong, we should either make way with 
ourselves or criminally make way with others under 
1 0.3 



104 HERALD SERMONS. 

provocation. The love of life, the sacredness of 
life, the right of every man to enjoy his life to its 
uttermost limit of time, is the basis of at least one 
of the Ten Commandments. Eliminate this cling- 
ing and you would make it impossible for human 
nature to bear its burdens ; for it would very 
quickly seek relief from them in the peace and 
silence of sleep. While we live, this life is more 
important than any other life. 

But this love of life, curiously enough, must be 
modified, controlled, disciplined, by the truths of 
religion before we can enjoy the higher kind of 
happiness. The clinging is well enough in its 
way, and it has a divine purpose to achieve, namely, 
to keep us just where we are until the One who is 
wiser than we thinks it time for our removal ; but 
unless we listen to what religion has to say about 
the future, the clinging is like a miser's grasp on 
his dollars ; it becomes a disease, affecting disas- 
trously that cheerful view of both the present and 
the future which is the peculiarity of the ideal man. 
Religion is the greatest boon that ever fell to the 
lot of mankind, because under its benign influence 
we are resigned to the inevitable while we remain 
here, and look forward to something - different and 



WHAT IS IT TO DIE? 105 

better when we shall cross the threshold of eternity. 
The worth of religion, therefore, as a practical 
factor is beyond the reach of computation, and in 
so far as you succeed in making it practical you 
render yourself satisfactory to yourself and to the 
world. 

Suppose we take the statement of this scholarly 
and critical and logical Paul and examine it with 
some care. It is perhaps as startling an utterance 
as ever fell from human lips. If he had said, " To 
live is gain," and had revealed the secret of longev- 
ity, we should follow his directions gratefully and 
implicitly ; but when he tells us that at a given 
period in our career it is much better to go else- 
where than to stay here, we wonder what his 
mental and spiritual point of view may be, for from 
our own point of view we have doubts on that 
subject. 

If there is any truth in what we think we believe 
about the future, then to die would be a gain, just 
as it would be a gain to leave an inconvenient 
residence and move into one that is more roomy 
and better suited to our needs. With heaven a 
glorious reality, we could hardly help being glad 
when the time came to go there. If it is a place 



106 HERALD SERMONS. 

where we shall not be forced to struggle for the 
necessaries of life, where the limitations from which 
we now suffer will be removed, where we shall 
have more opportunities and more encouragement 
to develop the best that is in us than the present 
can possibly afford, then it becomes clear that 
when our friends carry our bodies to the church- 
yard they do us a service, and the bells ought not 
to toll, but to chime. Paul evidently had this faith, 
for he declared that he had a longing to go hence 
which at times was beyond his power to control. 
He saw plainly what we see only dimly, — that the 
most precious thought that comes in our to-day is 
the thought of our to-morrow, — and he more than 
once declared that he looked forward to reunion in 
that other sphere with the fellow- workers in whose 
company he walked on the earth, but who had 
said their farewells and taken their departure. 

Still, the present life is important. Why we 
were born in this lower level, and must fall on 
sleep before we can reach the higher level, I do 
not know. It is a mystery and will always remain 
such. But of this I am sure : that for some good 
reason the providence of God has decreed that a 
certain amount of experience and discipline and 



WHAT IS IT TO DIE? 107 

education is necessary before we can be prepared 
for the better things to come. We get acquainted 
with ourselves here, and then, when we have found 
out who we are and what we are and what our 
destiny is, the curtain is drawn aside and we cross 
the threshold of the temple. 

Those who have gone await our coming. Our 
own lesson is not yet learned, but theirs is ; and 
from their higher vantage-ground they watch over 
us and guard us in ways we cannot fathom. Some 
day the call will be heard, and we shall obey it. 
The light of a setting sun gilds the evening clouds 
with splendor, the rainbow spans the heavens, and 
we have the rich promise of a fair day to-morrow. 



OUR TWO HOMES. 

" An inheritance . . . reserved in heaven for you." — I Pet. i. 4. 

If a man has a happy home his prayer will be 
one of gratitude and he will have very little to 
ask of God. 

When a boy goes into the world from a virtuous 
home he is like a young knight, well protected and 
well armed ; for if a child has been fed on truth 
and honor, he has a slender appetite for immoral 
allurements. 

Our homes are a mint and we are the precious 
metal which receives its stamp therein. 

One may be furnished with a complete panoply 
at his mother's knee, may be armed cap-a-pie for 
struggle and victory. 

Show me the home of a boy, and I will prophesy 
concerning his future without a tremor of uncer- 
tainty. Show me a man's home, and I can account 
for his peculiarities, his cheerfulness, or his despair. 
108 



OUR TWO HOMES. IO9 

A quiet home, on whose altar the flame of love 
and confidence never goes out, is as close to heaven 
as mortals can get this side the grave ; a home 
which lacks love and confidence breeds germs of 
misery, which multiply until ruin has done its 
awful work. 

The purpose of marriage is the building of the 
home. If there is any other motive — ■wealth or 
social position — we perform an act of sacrilege, 
defy the laws of the universe, and reap a harvest 
of tears. True love never listens to the ring of 
gold, and if we clasp hands because they hold a 
check-book we simply invite the avalanche to 
crush us. There are broken lives that might 
have been beautified, stormy lives that might have 
been filled with sunshine, desperate lives that might 
have been saintly, lives whose misery no plummet 
can sound. They are scattered everywhere, and 
they are the consequence of ambition and selfish- 
ness in making the solemn compact of marriage. 
If there is one relation on earth which should be 
kept free from mere worldliness, it is the relation 
between a man and a woman who are to walk in 
each other's company until death forces a separa- 
tion. A merely ambitious thought is like a drop 



IIO HERALD SERMONS. 

of poison in a tumbler of water, and he who drinks 
will never recover from its effects. 

There is something of God in a true home. 
With what beneficence He has made the arrange- 
ment, and what good things, like a stream of 
molten silver, flow from it! There are many such 
on the earth, and they are to the body politic 
what the heart is in the physical system. They 
constitute the element of progress and they contain 
the secret of the noblest manhood and the purest 
womanhood. Blot out our homes and we revert 
to barbarism. Man is a mere animal until he sits 
by his own hearthstone ; he is the toy of circum- 
stance, open to the temptations which sing like 
sirens and end in destruction. 

It is the sense of responsibility which makes us 
strong, and when that responsibility includes the 
welfare of wife and children, he must be a poor 
creature indeed who is not broadened and ennobled 
by it. What one would not do for himself he will 
bravely do for the protection of his household, and 
the man who would -not otherwise think it worth 
while to struggle will, for .the sake of his home, 
compel fate to give him what he demands. The 
consciousness of being loved makes us heroes, and 



OUR TWO HOMES. I I I 

the thoaght of our dear ones makes us willing to 
sacrifice even life in their behalf. 

But the home rests on an insecure foundation. 
We can protect it in some directions, but in 
others we are helpless. We may give comforts 
and luxuries, but we cannot give continued health. 
The circle may remain intact for a while, but there 
comes a time when it is invaded, and that invasion 
is irresistible. One never feels so powerless as 
when he faces a disease which has entered his 
house unbidden and will not retire when so ordered. 
The strongest man is only a child when he looks 
on the body which is the only thing that Death 
has left. Death and the little one have gone away 
together. 

Then comes a time when we are told that there 
is a place where these partings are unknown, where 
love flows on in uninterrupted beauty through 
countless ages, and we call that other place our 
home. Two homes we have : one here, with its 
mingled joy and sorrow ; the other there, beyond 
the stars. The loved ones who perforce bid. us 
farewell, for reasons which we are not able to 
penetrate, are led through the valley of shadows 
to eternal mansions, where, their affection un- 



112 HERALD SERMONS. 

dimmed by the change of residence, they patiently 
await our coming. And while waiting for us they 
minister to our comfort, are messengers from 
heaven bearing to our saddened hearts the good 
will and helpful benediction of the Father. 

It is possible to make this lower home like unto 
that above — so like it that nothing will seem 
strange when we reach the farther shore. It is 
possible to enjoy the bliss of trustful love here to 
such extent that when we, are in God's nearer 
presence we shall simply feel that we have entered 
a warmer zone. When religion has done its per- 
fect work in us, it will be but one step from the 
home on earth to the home in heaven. 



BEYOND THE HORIZON. 

" In My Father's house are many mansions.— "John xiv. 2. 

What a difference there is between a house in 
which a family resides and a house that is empty ! 
and yet it is the same house, or, rather, it is not 
the same house at all. 

Suppose you visit it on some festive occasion. 
The rooms are brilliantly lighted, there is the hum 
of many voices or the rich melody of merry laugh- 
ter, and the very air pulsates with buoyant life. 
There is neither nook nor corner in which good 
cheer is not found, and as you mingle with the 
throng you are impressed by the prevailing ex- 
uberance. Everything as well as everybody 
seems to be thoroughly alive, and even pictures 
and furniture tremble and* throb with the general 
joyousness. 

But cross that threshold after the house has 
been deserted for a few weeks. You are met by 
"3 



I 14 HERALD SERMONS. 

an ominous sort of gloom. The rooms are as they 
were, the pictures and furniture are all there, but 
something more than the family has apparently 
departed. The spirit of the house, so to speak, 
has gone, and the gathering dust and the hollow 
echo of your voice remind you that a remarkable 
change has taken place and that an inexpressible 
element is wanting. 

In like manner, what a difference between a 
body with a soul in whole-hearted possession of 
all its functions, and a body from which the tenant 
has removed ! It is the same body, and yet it is 
not the same at all. 

When the man who owned it was in occupation, 
how warmly the hand was thrust out to give you 
welcome, what generous words fell from the lips, 
either in congratulation or in condolence, and how 
flashed the eyes as though each were a hearthstone 
filled with blazing logs ! The body was subject 
to the will of the tenant and obeyed his slightest 
behest. It ran or walked, danced or sang, knelt 
or climbed, with a kind of glad willingness. 

But something has happened. There lies that 
body, but it stirs not. It is neither hospitable nor 
kind. You recognize every feature, but still your 



BEYOND THE HORIZON. I 1 5 

friend is not there. You speak, but the ear is dull 
for the first time. You take the hand, but there 
is no responsive pressure. The eyes refuse even 
to open, though they were never guilty of such 
discourtesy before. 

What has occurred? Only this: that your 
comrade has moved out of his old home and gone 
elsewhere to live. You did not see him go and 
you cannot say exactly where his new residence is, 
and for that reason you are mystified and perhaps 
greatly troubled. What we do not understand is 
apt to disturb us. But the only difference between 
the first illustration, the empty house, and the 
second, the empty body, is that when the family 
moved they left word as to their destination, and 
the sufferer who moved did not. 

It does not follow that because you do not know 
where your friend is he therefore is not, and yet 
that is the illogical assertion which doubt reiterates, 
to our constant dismay. We often drop a tear on 
a grave, whereas if we could see things as they are 
we should whisper our congratulations to the air 
in the hope that the dear one might hear them. 

The soul is too important to die, and the body 
is too unimportant to exist for more than a few 



Il6 HERALD SERMONS. 

decades. It is a very curious fact that every man 
is in love with his own soul or personality. He 
prizes that something which he calls his real self 
above all other possessions. He would not ex- 
change himself, even though conscious of many a 
weakness, for any other human being on the earth. 
He may find fault with fate and deem himself 
harshly used ; still, he would rather be himself with 
poverty than any other with wealth. 

Not so with the body. That is quite another 
matter. No one thinks of his body as himself — 
only as a minor part of himself. He would be 
glad to have another body, just as we would be 
glad to move out of a wretched hovel into a well- 
built mansion. We by no means have the same 
pride in body that we have in personality. We 
might be happy to get rid of the one, but nothing 
could tempt us to part with the other. 

And what reason do you suppose God could 
have for destroying a soul ? Nothing else in the 
universe is destroyed, and why should the greatest 
of His creations suffer a fate not meted out to the 
meanest? The body exhausts its possibilities and 
then falls back to dust. It reaches its climax, and 
longer duration would add nothing to the perfec- 



BEYOND THE HORIZON. I I 7 

tion of its functions. But does a man's intelligence, 
does his spirit, exhaust all possibilities? The 
mental and spiritual appetites are merely whetted 
by our earthly experience ; we simply acquire a 
keen relish, and then the house falls into ruin and 
we must leave it. 

Another body, another life, another environ- 
ment! That is what the soul has prophesied for 
itself as a consequence of God's goodness and 
wisdom. And then comes ringing through the 
ages the Voice which checks our tears at separation 
and transmutes them into the hope of reunion, 
saying, " I go to prepare a place for you." 

I know not where heaven is and scarcely care to 
inquire ; but it is somewhere, and the thought is 
to the heart of a man what the falling rain is to 
the parched fields. 



OUR FAITH AND OUR BODIES. 

"As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." — Pro v. xxiii. 7. 

There are certain passages of Scripture, of 
which this is one, whose real significance is at last 
being discovered. 

In the diamond-fields of Africa priceless stones 
have remained for ages unknown and undisturbed ; 
and in the domain of spirit precious truths have 
lain for centuries unrecognized. By some happy 
chance an explorer of the African wild stumbles 
on the scattered gems, and the world is at once 
made richer. By an equal chance a scientist or 
philosopher announces a new principle or truth, 
and we find that some old prophet or seer taught 
it centuries ago, and the world has been deaf until 
now. 

The text furnishes an apt illustration. In a 
vague and general way we have always believed 
that a man's thoughts possess a kind of creative 
118 



OUR FAITH AND OUR BODIES. HO, 

energy, but we have not appreciated the practical 
value and importance of this fact. We have simply 
glanced at it and then passed by on the other side. 
The rough diamond was under our very feet and 
we every day trod on the spot where it lay, but 
not until recent years has any one picked it up 
and polished it and shown us its radiant beauty. 

At last, however, it has been revealed to us that 
in its broadest sense the heart makes the man, and 
that the words, " As he thinketh in his heart, so 
is he," are not the expression of a poetical fancy, 
but of a literal and awful, as well as an encourag- 
ing, truth. The basis of all true reform lies in the 
fact that body and soul not only reflect each other's 
moods, but that in the ideal man, the Christ man, 
the soul is undisputed master of the body. 

Physicians assure us that mental conditions pro- 
duce — that is, originate — bodily disease. Therein 
is one of the profoundest problems of the profes- 
sion, and in some cases its despair. We are startled 
beyond measure when told that not only will vi- 
cious habits result in physical derangement, but 
that continuously vicious thoughts have the same 
tendency. 

The world has gone wrong for many generations 



120 HERALD SERMONS. 

and become entangled in the meshes of inherited 
maladies simply because men have chosen their 
own way in opposition to God's way. The world's 
mental attitude has been the fruitful source of all 
the bodily evils from which it has suffered. If the 
universal mind had convinced itself in the begin- 
ning that unselfishness is more profitable than 
selfishness, that purity pays dividends while im- 
purity lays assessments, and had continued through 
the centuries to lovingly live along the lines of the 
Creator's plan, pain would be a thing unknown, 
the word " disease " would never have been coined, 
and death would be like the sweet sleep of child- 
hood, from which we would wake in heaven. So 
far as the world is God's world, it is perfect; so 
far as it is man's world, it needs the succor of 
mighty remedial agencies. 

Now, since mental conditions produce disease, 
then it must follow that mental conditions may 
check disease and even produce health. Let us 
linger here for a moment, for we are kneeling on 
the ground as the Christ passes by, and touching 
the hem of His garment ; we are on the threshold 
of very wonderful discoveries, the value of which 
cannot be estimated. If it be true that to possess 



OUR FAITH AND OUR BODIES. .121 

the Christ spirit is not merely to bear the ills of 
life serenely, but also to prevent them to a degree, 
then for the first time we lift our religion out of 
its theological environment and make it a priceless, 
practical truth. When it is forced upon us that 
no man can be wholly well, either in body or in 
soul, who is not consciously God's child, and that 
we are well or ill in body and soul in proportion 
to our filial relation to Him, then we put religion 
where it belongs, on the strong foundation from 
which in our ignorance of natural and moral law 
we long ago removed it. 

The important fact for men to recognize is this : 
that the cardinal virtues are the corner-stones of a 
healthy body and a healthy character. The spirit 
of the Christ dissipates that condition of mind 
which produces disease, and tends to reproduce 
health as surely as wheat-seed, if properly sowed, 
will furnish a wheat-crop. The assertion is entirely 
within the bounds of known scientific law, that the 
ideal man is he who reverently looks to heaven 
and says, " In Him I live, and move, and have my 
being." 

Here is the' grand lesson to ponder : that faith 
is reposeful, that it is the equivalent of strength, 



122 HERALD SERMONS. 

for it is the miracle-worker that not only enables 
us to bear pain, but lessens the pain itself. 

How wonderfully practical Christianity be- 
comes! You must feed the mind with whole- 
some thoughts, or you will vainly feed the body 
with wholesome food. Your physical comfort 
depends on what you are able to see when you 
look into the heavens. The heart is the man. It 
is like the spring, in which the river has its source. 
Unless the spring is kept pure, the river will be 
turbid to its very mouth ; and unless the heart is 
kept pure, there can be no home, no health, no 
happiness. Undefiled religion is nothing else than 
the Christ spirit, which makes each event of life a 
stepping-stone to higher things, and death the 
topmost step, from which we are lifted into heaven. 



THE SEASONS AND THE SOUL. 

" Seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and 
winter, and day and night." — Gen. viii. 22. 

These are the changes which mark the recur- 
ring seasons of the year, and their counterparts 
are to be found in the life of man. A year and a 
man pass through precisely the same experience ; 
for in the history of every human being are to be 
found periods of heat and cold, of seed-time and 
harvest, and of day and night. 

The thoughtful man, who carefully watches 
what may be called the struggles of nature, its 
joys, its shadows, its clear and its cloudy skies, its 
fragrant flowers and noxious weeds, must feel as 
though he were looking into the glass of fate, 
wherein he sees reflected all the peculiarities of 
his own spiritual life. He and nature are passing 
through precisely the same changes, and there is 
neither weed nor flower, neither ice nor heat, 
123 



124 HERALD SERMONS. 

neither tempest nor calm, for the one, which the 
other does not equally experience. 

What more exquisite in their beauty, their fra- 
grance, and their mystery than the bubbling, bab- 
bling, joyous springtimes of nature and of man? 
We are puzzled by the processes of growth in both 
instances, and by the boundless exuberance of both. 

Within the seed is a handful of omnipotence, a 
moiety of intelligence, and when it is bedded it 
silently sets about a task so marvelous that if you 
were to see its work for the first time you would 
hardly contain yourself for wonder. What is that 
divine propulsion which draws from the soil mate- 
rials which the most skilful chemist cannot reach? 

The boy is spiritually a seed also, and the mys- 
tery of his growth is equally beyond solution. 
What marvels of possibility are packed within 
that narrow soul ! As the sculptor finds an angel 
in every block of marble, and with hammer and 
chisel slowly brings it to view, so in every boy 
there is a grandeur of character, an archangel's 
excellence, all the elements of that kind of success 
which God smiles upon. They need but the 
Master's hand and the discipline of life, and then 
you will see a true nobleman. 



THE SEASONS AND THE SOUL. 1 25 

The springtime is full of gladness and fragrance 
and laughter and a certain kind of happiness, but 
is it, after all, the best season? I think not. 

Then comes the summer, with its torrid heat, 
its fields of ripening grain, its vineyards and or- 
chards laden with their luscious products. Nature 
has been hard at work, and the results of her toil 
are in evidence. The very planet must be heavier, 
since all the blossoms of spring have changed to 
fruit so generous in weight that the branches can 
hardly bear the strain. Abundance, abundance 
everywhere. 

An equally curious transition has come to the 
boy. Childish things have been put away, and he 
is bearing with the strength of physical maturity 
the heat and burden of the day. With a godlike 
intellect he makes companions of the stars and 
forces from them secrets which stretch through the 
countless years of the past ; he corrals, for the prac- 
tical benefit of mankind, the innumerable natural 
laws which have never before known subjection ex- 
cept to the will of God. They are tamed and har- 
nessed, and become as obedient and docile as were 
the genii of fairy tales. 

Summer is the season of achievement. The 



126 HERALD SERMONS. 

man has developed capacities which excite our 
wonder, for he grasps the east and the west with 
his two hands. The earth trembles under his feet 
and the heavens are within easy reach. And yet 
the appetite for knowledge grows by what it feeds 
on, and he is impressed and oppressed by the con- 
sciousness that he has not reached the limit of 
discovery or of his own ability to discover. Is it 
true that he will continue to grow, or is there a 
boundary which he cannot pass? It has not yet 
been found, and the future beckons him to still 
greater accomplishment. 

Therefore, I say, the summer of life is not its 
best season. 

Autumn comes with its chilling frosts, and winter 
treads on autumn's heels, its arms full of snow and 
ice. The earth yields up its glorious harvests, then 
becomes drowsy, and soon falls on slumber. The 
sap no longer flows, the leaves wither and cover 
the ground, the trees in orchard and forest are 
denuded, and a kind of sadness hovers over the 
earth like a canopy of cloud. 

The same experience comes to man. His ma- 
turity has passed, his work is done. The heart 
begins to beat like a muffled drum, and the presage 



THE SEASONS AND THE SOUL. 127 

of approaching dissolution whispers strange pos- 
sibilities in his ears. 

Ah ! but the fields and forests are not dead ; 
they only sleep. You may grow sad in winter, 
but both fields and forests will tell you that they 
are glad to rest awhile, for another spring will soon 
beckon them, and then they will begin the work of 
production once more. 

The correspondence between nature and man 
still continues, for the winter of life will by and by 
give way to the springtime of eternity. The man 
who dies has not reached the limit of his powers, 
but in some other world and under more favorable 
conditions will take up the work which death 
forced him to relinquish. 

I say, therefore, that the best season of the soul's 
long year is the springtime of immortality that is 
to come. 



WHEN WE GET THERE. 

" For now we see through a glass, darkly." — I Cor. xiii. 12. 

We shall have a great many curious experiences 
when we reach the " house not made with hands," 
for, once safely out of the body and beyond its 
limitations, we shall be able to look back and solve 
some of the puzzles of this present life. 

When a man has lived in a narrow valley for 
many years, his mind becomes as narrow as the 
valley and he almost necessarily takes a narrow 
view of things. Lift him, by some magic, to the 
summit of the mountain, let him look down on the 
little place in which he passed his summers and 
winters and then out on the boundless landscape 
that stretches beyond the reach of his vision, and 
he at once becomes larger and broader. He un- 
derstands on the instant a great many things which 
have heretofore been hidden from him. When he 
128 



WHEN WE GET THERE. 1 29 

lived in the valley he wondered about a thousand 
matters, but only had his labor for his pains, be- 
cause his wonder asked questions which reason 
could not answer. From the vantage-ground of 
the summit, however, he simply looks abroad and 
many of these questions answer themselves. 

Or, again, if a man lives in the dark, he can find 
out a great deal by groping, and as far as he is 
able to go his information may be quite correct. 
From the little he knows he may fashion a theory 
of the many things he does not know, but that 
theory will be always open to doubts and subject 
to change, because he is dealing with matters be- 
yond his vision. Suppose you were able to draw 
up the hidden curtain of some hidden window and 
let the blazing glory of the sunlight into the room 
in which he has lived. He would be at first em- 
barrassed, if not positively frightened, and it would 
require time for him to become accustomed to the 
new state of affairs ; but how much he would learn, 
and in how short a time he would learn it! A 
single glance, and many of his preconceived notions 
would fall like withered leaves; another glance, 
and the actual truth concerning things would 
gradually dawn on his startled but delighted mind. 



130 HERALD SERMONS. 

Something of that kind must needs happen when 
we open the door on the thither side of the tomb 
and step from the darkness of death into the bright 
light of eternal life. When the first bewilderment 
has passed we shall look back with a kind of regret 
that it was possible for us to so misunderstand the 
beneficent purpose of God in the experiences which 
were allotted to us. 

We shall see that this life is really very beautiful, 
for earth is only a suburb of heaven and if rightly 
used would be full of happiness. It is hard to 
believe that it was God's intention that we should 
suffer as in a great many instances we £o suffer. 
Unless we declare that God's moral, and, for that 
matter, His physical laws also, were made to be 
broken, we must insist that much of the sorrow 
which burdens the heart is the result of our own 
misdoing rather than of God's doing. . 

That discipline is necessary we will not doubt; 
but why add to the discipline of a wise and kindly 
Providence what ought to be classified as the 
penalty of broken laws? When God hurts us we 
can bear it, but how shall we bear the hurts we 
inflict on ourselves by the wilfulness and wanton- 
ness which He has distinctly forbidden us to in- 



WHEN WE GET THERE. 131 

dulge, and which He must punish in order to teach 
us the terrible lesson of obedience ? 

All this is very puzzling to us just now, and in 
the silent watches of the night the eyes of the body 
have been kept wide open, because the inquiring 
eyes of the mind could not see the solution of the 
mystery. But when we are free, when we stand 
on higher ground and look down on all we have 
done and left undone, we shall discover that at the 
first God filled this lower life with all possible hap- 
piness, and that our perverse and perhaps ignorant 
attitude toward Him has conjured up evils which 
are permitted by Him, but not approved. 

If we could only come back from heaven and 
bring our newly acquired knowledge with us, how 
little our second earthly life would resemble the 
first ! In other words, the Christ spirit alone makes 
life beautiful, and if we have not that, then there 
are awful experiences in our months and years, 
just as in the landscape there are disfiguring 
chasms, and precipices, and lava-beds, and long 
stretches of arid and unproductive territory. 

The lips of the body may laugh at trivial things, 
but when the soul laughs and is merry, it is because 
God is not far off and heaven is nigh at hand. 



132 HERALD SERMONS. 

The serene heart is the obedient heart — the heart 
that beats in unison with the eternal truth of things. 
It is always quiet, even as Christ's heart was quiet, 
because there is nothing to fear and nothing to 
dread when God's sentinels guard the home. 
Love, faith, peace — these are golden keys which 
hang at the girdle when man is his best self, as the 
dear Lord intended him always to be, and they 
unlock the mysteries of the present and turn the 
bolt in the door of the future. Love God ; be 
faithful ; for, though just now you see through a 
glass, darkly, it is a Father's hand that leads and a 
Father's strength that protects you. 



EASTER MORNING. 

" The stone taken away from the sepulcher." — John xx. I. 

I IMAGINE that astonishment reached its utmost 
limits when the people of Jerusalem learned that 
some one had rolled the stone away and that the 
tomb was empty. A great many declared, and 
with some show of reason, that what had apparently 
happened had certainly not really happened. How 
could it happen? they asked one another, disdain- 
fully. Was He not dead, and was not His death 
attested by the spear which pierced His side? 
Were not specially instructed guards set to watch 
the place, and do Roman soldiers fail in their duty 
when death is the penalty of neglect? How, then, 
does it come about that so strange a rumor fills the 
air? 

There was scarcely a household in the whole 
magnificent city which, on the morning of that 
third day, was not profoundly stirred. Cheeks 
133 



134 HERALD SERMONS. 

were flushed as the facts were related, and the 
discussion of possibilities waxed hot. Some 
shrugged their shoulders with contemptuous in- 
credulity, and others simply replied, " He said He 
would rise again, and He has kept His word." 

We of a later generation, living in an environ- 
ment of scientific marvels, hesitate before declaring 
that anything is impossible. Experience has taught 
us caution, for what our fathers could not believe 
we not only believe, but explain by laws hitherto 
unknown. 

When we have been told heretofore that Christ 
appeared to the disciples in that upper room, the 
doors being shut, even the most reverent among 
us have been unwilling, if not unable, to argue the 
matter. But recent discoveries have opened up 
a new world to our wondering eyes. We have 
hardly yet recovered from our bewilderment at 
the statement of what has been accomplished, and 
scarcely dare think of the further miracles that 
may be achieved in the near future. Has not the 
foremost science just declared that among other 
miracles it may yet be able to pass a solid through 
a solid ; and have not all our notions of the impos- 
sible been thus scattered to the four winds? On 



EASTER MORNING. 1 35 

this Easter morning, for the first time in twenty 
centuries, the sudden appearance of Christ in that 
upper room strikes us as not entirely strange. A 
whole series of higher laws — laws which thrill us 
with wonder and gratitude, laws the very contem- 
plation of which moistens the eyes and makes the 
heart feverish with excitement — are being dis- 
covered. It seems as though heaven itself were 
not far off, and as though the hour had struck 
when Christ, who once said, " I have yet many 
things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
now," had begun to make a second revelation. 

" How are the dead raised up? and with what 
body do they come?" These are questions to 
which answers are easily found. Nature has her- 
self suggested them. For instance, on that leaf 
in your garden crawls a common grub ; it is un- 
graceful in its motions and unattractive in appear- 
ance. You doubt my word when I tell you that 
within the body of that crawling creature are 
packed away a pair of wings which will some day 
come' into use ; that from this low form of existence 
will be evolved something so entirely different that 
you cannot recognize any relation between the 
two ; that it will slough off this slimy coil and be- 



I36 HERALD SERMONS. 

come a thing of beauty, cutting the air with many- 
colored wings and sipping honey from every fra- 
grant flower. You doubt all this, unless you have 
had experience in such matters, refer me to the 
sharply drawn lines between the possible and the 
impossible, and hint something about the credulity 
of those who believe in fairy tales. Nevertheless 
the new creature is hidden in the old, and in good 
time the grub will stitch away at its own shroud. 
It will fall upon sleep, and when the delicate and 
marvelous change has been made it will burst its 
bonds and emerge a butterfly. 

Hardly more strange than that is man's passage 
from the mortal to immortality. Untried faculties 
are hidden in every human soul, like the wings in 
the grub, and at no time in this lower life do they 
come into full play. We crawl, but by a curious 
instinct we long to fly. You cannot persuade us 
that mere crawling is our manifest destiny and that 
there are no grander things to be done than those 
we are now doing, for we are half conscious that 
in the rags of our beggary a prince will sometime 
be found. The tomb is only the chrysalis in which 
we fall asleep. The grub weaves its own shroud, 
but the hands of loved ones perform that service 



EASTER MORNING. I 37 

for us. So come the dim shadows of night on 
each in turn, but in the morning the finger-tips of 
angels touch their eyes, and they waken, to join 
the glad company of those who have gone before 
and who gather about them to give them welcome 
to the new world. 

It is all wonderful — gloriously, grandly won- 
derful, and gloriously and grandly true. 



GOD'S CHILDREN, ALL. 

" Am I my brother's keeper? " — Gen. iv. 9. 

Upon every man that lives is imposed a double 
responsibility : he is definitely and sharply re- 
sponsible for himself, and to a certain extent for 
every one who comes within the sphere of his in- 
fluence. 

The man who wants everything is apt to end by 
being in want of everything, while he who gives 
freely is apt to grow richer in heart, though he 
grows poorer in purse. 

It is curious to note our dependence on one an- 
other and how impossible it is to be sufficient unto 
ourselves. The world may get on very well with- 
out us, but not for a day can we get on without 
the world. It furnishes us with pretty nearly all 
the materials out of which we build character and 
success. It donates a thousand physical comforts 
and conveniences which we could not fashion for 
138 



god's children, all. 139 

ourselves. It surrounds us with certain moral 
influences which are the growth of ages, and pre- 
sents for our imitation the careers of its noblest 
heroes in every department of life. You are but 
one thread in the great fabric, and would be 
counted as nothing but for the other threads which 
give you your importance. 

Out of these facts certain duties grow, and these 
duties, properly set in order, make up what we 
call practical religion. It is a system of religion 
that can rouse our deepest enthusiasm, for it is 
based on the Fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man. It goes back to the time when 
shepherds fed their flocks on the everlasting hills, 
and it goes forward as far as the millennium. Men 
may speculate as they please about the nature of 
duty and the various methods by which salvation 
can be attained, but their creeds may all be whistled 
down the wind like, so much thistledown, for over 
and above all creeds and all speculation, even as a 
giant bendeth over a child, these two facts tower 
in splendor and majesty : namely, that religion 
consists in love toward God, a love that flies up- 
ward to the stars, and love toward man, a love 
that makes each sufferer our neighbor, or, better 



140 HERALD SERMONS. 

still, our brother. The angels stoop to earth with 
smiling faces whenever a man sacrifices his own 
comfort in order to encourage some disheartened 
soul. The aeolian harp makes exquisite music 
when the breezes sweep over its strings, but the 
human heart makes far better music when willing 
hands have busied themselves to uplift a fallen 
brother. There is no satisfaction so nearly divine 
as that which comes when God's angels knock at 
your door and thank you for saving one who but 
for your efforts would have gone far astray. 

You would not dare to sit indifferently by if 
some one, blindfolded, were staggering toward a 
precipice. It would be the rankest heresy and 
the most contemptible cowardice to declare that 
no responsibility for his fate rested on your 
shoulders. If by your exertions you can save 
him, you are by that fact made responsible for 
the injury that befalls. 

You cannot wrap your mantle of self-righteous- 
ness about you and pursue the policy of saving 
yourself and letting others take their chances. 
The Fatherhood of God repudiates that kind of 
religion, and the brotherhood of man grows pale 
at thought of it. 



GOD S CHILDREN, ALL. 141 

There are many precipices, and many blind- 
folded souls are staggering dangerously near the 
edge. Temptation drives with a whip of knotted 
cords, and our passions and appetites deprive us 
of our common sense. Men are reeling toward a 
thousand hells, and pits of perdition yawn every- 
where. Shall you be dumb or sit at your ease 
because there is no pit near you ? If a man falls 
whom you can save, you also shall fall in the great 
hereafter. If souls are crying out for help and 
you sit idly by, there is no heaven for you either 
to-day or to-morrow. You are your brother's 
keeper, and you can do nothing better for yourself 
than doing something for others. If you can say, 
I have saved this man or that man, the angels will 
reply, And at the same time and by that very act 
you saved yourself. 

What a grand thing, then, is religion! With 
what dignity it bears itself, and how majestic is its 
mien ! What a grasp it has on the heart, and what 
fires of love it kindles! How close to God we 
get by getting close to our fellow-men, and how 
near to heaven we are when surrounded by good 
deeds! Speak, then, the kindly, cheering word 
whenever opportunity offers, reach out the helping 



142 HERALD SERMONS. 

hand to those needy ones who cross your path, 
and you will be surprised to find brightness and 
gladness in your own life ; for no one ever clasped 
his brother's hand without discovering that in some 
mysterious way he clasped God's hand also. The 
world is beautiful when there is love in the heart. 



GOD'S SYMPATHY. 

" He also will hear their cry, and will save them." — Ps. cxlv. 19. 

One of the most impressive facts in connection 
with Christ is His loneliness. To a very large 
extent He was isolated from human sympathy. 
Not even His nearest friends could appreciate 
either His motives or His work, and it was there- 
fore impossible to make a confidant of any one. 
What personal suffering was consequent upon this 
entire lack of contact, either mental or spiritual, 
with His kind we shall never know; but certain 
we are that His only sources of consolation were 
the ministry of angels, who, I imagine, were always 
visible and always near at hand, and the presence 
of the Father, of which He was conscious all the 
time. 

There are some epochs in our own little lives 
when in a far-away manner we resemble the Christ 
in this respect. 

143 



144 HERALD SERMONS. 

As a general thing, and with regard to ordinary 
experiences, we not only look for, but find, an 
abundance of human sympathy. It is one of the 
most beneficent of decrees that we shall not bear 
our burdens alone. In the emergency, friendship 
is quick to offer its services, and the moistened 
eyes of our neighbors respond to our grief. When 
there is crape on our door, other households are 
hushed as though they shared to some extent our 
affliction, and ready hands are held out, and gener- 
ous and helpful words are uttered, which make us 
feel that there is a great deal of kindliness in the 
world, after all. 

And this sympathy is a very marvelous and at 
the same time a very precious thing. We never 
go alone to the churchyard to leave the body of 
a loved one there. It would be a strange thing 
and unaccountable to go alone on such an errand. 
We should wonder what it meant, and feel that the 
grief which had fallen on us had somehow been 
doubled by the indifference of our friends. It is 
always a procession that goes to the cemetery. 
There are many who go with us, and they rever- 
ently stand by our side, ready to do what may be 
done for our consolation and comfort. 



god's sympathy. 145 

Neither are we alone when some malady stalks 
into the house and lays its iron hand on one of the 
family. When our hearts quake, the same stroke 
makes other hearts tremble with sympathy. If 
there are two pianos in a room, you cannot strike 
the chords on one without awaking responsive 
vibrations in the other. Heartstrings vibrate even 
more quickly. What is more natural than to run 
to the aid of one who is falling, and what is more 
divine than to make a personal sacrifice in order to 
carry comfort to some tired soul? It is by such 
deeds that we are made to feel the brotherhood of 
the human family and therefore the Fatherhood 
of God ; and it is a glorious fact that, though we 
find it sometimes difficult to rejoice in the good 
fortune of another, .since shameful envy blocks the 
way, it seldom happens that we fail to be sorry 
for another's misfortune. 

But there are certain experiences which we feel 
it necessary to bear alone, and they are doubly 
severe for that reason. It is impossible to take 
any one into our confidence, partly because no 
one can fully appreciate the situation, and partly 
because we are unwilling to communicate the facts. 
How many griefs there are the records of which 



146 HERALD SERMONS. 

are only kept in the hieroglyphics of a wrinkled 
brow or a dimmed eye or a faltering step ! Not 
time, but trouble, whitens the hair sometimes, and 
changes the whole outlook upon life, and what 
that trouble is you must lock up in your heart's 
profoundest vault. 

There are two kinds of sorrow — that which all 
the world is free to know, and that which you 
cannot tell. When the son dies the news spreads 
itself, but when he goes wrong you protect him 
by keeping silent. That story cannot pass your 
lips, neither can it be wrung from you. You never 
needed sympathy more, but the sympathy that is 
human you cannot have. There are other sorrows 
of a like nature, and they come to young and old 
alike — sorrows to be kept close and never uttered. 
They are found everywhere, and if you could lift 
the wide world's curtain and see them, you would 
be sorely troubled. How many griefs we suffer 
alone, and what a strange burden they are ! 

It is a great comfort, however, to know that 
what we cannot find below comes down from 
above laden with a blessing. It is not that we 
cannot hide the secret from Him and therefore 
pray, but that we know it is safe with Him and 



god's sympathy. 147 

that His sympathy is perfect. Every door on 
earth closed, but the windows toward heaven wide 
open. Not the ear of the profoundest friendship 
may listen, but we gladly tell it all to Him. There 
are some things which only God and we may know, 
and religion establishes such a relationship between 
us and Him that we can feel a friendly arm un- 
derneath us and hear with our hearts the voice of 
good cheer. That vital religion, practical to the 
last degree, is to the soul what air is to the lungs 
— a something absolutely necessary to comfort, 
contentment, happiness. You can live without 
the sympathy of your fellows, and in the deepest 
experiences you rather shun that sympathy ; but 
you cannot live without the sympathy of the 
Father, nor yet without the watchful care of His 
angels. With a confidence in Him that never 
wavers, and a faith in the unseen agents whom He 
sends to your rescue, you not only need fear no 
danger, but you can also be peaceful and quiet in 
very troublous times. 



THE MISSION OF DOUBT. 

" A good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith." — Acts 
xi. 24. 

EVERYBODY has doubts, just as every ladder 
has rungs. As the rungs suggest climbing and at 
the same time furnish the opportunity of doing so, 
so doubts suggest the possibility of reaching the 
grandest truths and are frequently the means by 
which we attain them. 

When a young man tells you of his doubts you 
may be sure that he has begun to think seriously. 
He has simply put his ladder in place and has his 
foot on the first rung. Doubts are nothing more 
than a dark passage, at the other end of which is 
eternal light. They are what antennas are to the 
insect — the instruments which nature has provided 
and which decide whether it is safe to take the 
next step or not. If a man has never entertained 
148 



THE MISSION OF DOUBT. 149 

a doubt his opinion is not worth asking for, for a 
doubt is the first expression of the intellect when 
it begins to make a theory of the universe. 

Doubt is a dark passage leading to the light, but 
it is exceedingly unfortunate when a man loses his 
way in the passage and never reaches the light. 
Such a one is to be greatly pitied, because at the 
end of life he will have missed its most beautiful 
experiences. No one can possibly enjoy himself 
as thoroughly amid the somber shadows of unbe- 
lief, or of non-belief, or of what is called agnosti- 
cism, as when basking in the warm sunshine of a 
reasonable faith. If the doubt is the end of it all, 
and there is nothing else to come, the situation is 
as unsatisfactory as that of a man who should 
spend his whole life in climbing the ladder, never 
reaching the higher level against which the upper 
end of the ladder rests. 

Human nature is so constituted that faith is 
absolutely necessary to happiness, and your doubts 
are nothing more than the sifting or winnowing 
process by which you separate the chaff from the 
wheat. In other words, your doubts examine all 
statements with a critical eye, and so carefully 
superintend your constructive work that when you 



I50 HERALD SERMONS. 

say positively, " I believe," it means that your 
faith is wholly reasonable. 

This appetite, or hunger, or craving for faith is 
everywhere visible. If we were to lose confidence 
in the commercial honor of our fellow-men, the 
wheels of industry would suddenly come to a 
standstill and the hum of enterprise would be 
hushed. It is a strange thing that the commerce 
of the world rests — and securely, too — on the 
simple belief that every man will meet his obliga- 
tions. If we enter the inner circle of our civiliza- 
tion, we find that the sanctified products of home 
life depend on the loyal and unselfish love of father 
and mother.. Throw a doubt of that loyalty into 
the home, and it is like hitting a piece of fine por- 
celain with a hammer. The fire on the hearthstone 
is kindled by faith and kept alive by faith. Faith 
in each other is the central idea of home, and it is 
as impossible to have a home where that idea does 
not prevail as it is to make a cheerful blaze from 
wet and soggy wood. 

As in commerce and in the home, so in your 
religious life, you must have faith. In commerce 
the lack of faith will produce an immediate panic ; 
in the home the lack of faith means misery and 



THE MISSION OF DOUBT. 151 

broken hearts ; in religion — but there can be no 
religion without faith, and a community without 
religion is .like a man who tries to warm his hands 
on a block of ice. It was Voltaire who said that 
if 'there were no God it would be necessary to in- 
vent one. It is belief in God's existence and faith 
in His wisdom which furnish all the noblest mo- 
tives that actuate us, giving us a key with which 
to unlock mysteries, and the resignation of cheer- 
ful submission when the waves of misery dash 
over'us. 

But that kind of faith comes from the victory 
we have won over our doubts. To begin with 
doubts is simply to whet your appetite for truth ; 
to end with doubts is to give that whetted appetite 
no food to eat and so to die of starvation. It is 
faith, after all, which produces all the magic in our 
lives, for it is just as necessary to our personal 
happiness to lift up our hands to heaven, in the 
belief that unseen beings will lead us through the 
falling night, as it is for a child to believe that its 
father will protect it in the coming storm. We 
are so made that if we ask for the best things they 
must come down from above. 

Your doubts have a mission, and if they accom- 



152 HERALD SERMONS. 

plish that mission, all will go well ; if they do not, 
all will go ill. They serve an admirable purpose 
when they are simply wayside inns, wherein you 
take rest and lunch while on the journey, and' then 
push forward to something better. But you can- 
not live comfortably in a wayside inn and you 
cannot live happily in a doubt. Faith is not an 
inn, but a home, whose roof will shelter you ; and 
every man knows that home and heaven are closely 
related to each other. 



THE PEACE OF THE SOUL. 

" For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be 
content." — Phil. iv. II. 

It is not uncommon to hear a rich man say that 
his years of struggle were the happiest of his life, 
thus proving rather conclusively that there is noth- 
ing in wealth itself to make a man happy. 

The hope to attain is always an inspiration, but 
actual attainment is frequently a disappointment 
and sometimes a positive misfortune. The climb- 
ing boy, who keeps the summit in view and makes 
a thousand efforts to reach it, is really leading the 
ideal life ; for every function, physical and mental, 
works under a health-giving and pleasure-giving 
excitement. When a man has reached the summit, 
he too often finds that his ideal has suddenly dis- 
appeared. 

It is rather evident that the chief purpose of this 
present life is to try to succeed, but not to succeed 
i53 



154 HERALD SERMONS. 

wholly. The noblest man is he who has not yet 
done all he expects to do, and whose soul is lighted 
up with anticipation of better things to come. 

The true philosophy of life, therefore, teaches 
us to do what we can, but not to worry because 
we cannot do more. A man needs ambition, just 
as a horse needs the spur; but you can spur a 
horse until he becomes nervously exhausted, and 
a man can be so ambitious that he loses sight of 
honesty and moral principle and rectitude of char- 
acter — in which case he may be a millionaire, but 
he is at the same time a spiritual wreck. 

I would say to a young man just crossing the 
threshold, Struggle for a fortune if that is your 
dream, but give the proper price for it and no 
more. It never pays to exchange self-respect for 
anything which this world can offer. Keep your 
soul pure, even if you are compelled to keep your 
body poor in order to do so. In the long run — 
that is, at the end of forty years, when you shall 
have learned to take a large view of affairs and 
when the glamours of youth shall have passed — 
you will discover that the things which money 
-cannot buy are what you want most and that your 



THE PEACE OF THE SOUL. 1 55 

bank-account has much less to do with personal 
happiness than you thought possible in earlier 
days. 

And I would say to the man in middle life who 
has fallen on despair because he must still work 
hard and spend with cautious care, that the best 
fate that can befall is the necessity of earning a 
living, provided labor and contentment live under 
the same roof. It is not labor that kills, but worry. 
Cheerfulness can toil by day and sweetly sleep at 
night, but discontent wears the body and annihi- 
lates every noble impulse. There is no disease 
more harmful than this, none that can make greater 
ravages. It is the frost that nips the tender shoots 
and makes a harvest impossible ; it is the prairie 
fire that heats the soil until the very roots are 
killed. 

Now there are some things which you need not 
hope to attain ; then be content without them. 
You must not wrench yourself in the hope of 
grasping what is hopelessly beyond your reach, 
and if you have learned that fact and give yourself 
to making the best of what you have or can have, 
you are living on true Christian principles; you 



156 HERALD SERMONS. 

have something better than the philosopher's stone, 
for if you cannot by your magic turn cruder metals 
into gold, you can make even adversity smile, and, 
like the bee, get honey from the thorny thistle. 

The man who makes the most of the little that 
he has is of more intrinsic worth than he who owns 
worlds, but is unhappy because he has not more. 
The only religion I care anything about is that 
which teaches me to be of good cheer and makes 
me grateful for what I possess. We do not need 
the half of what we demand in order to make 
life comfortable. A slender income with a warm 
heart is better than riches and a restless soul. 

Let your strivings, then, be after contentment. 
Get out of each passing day all the sweetness there 
is in it. Live in the present hour as much as 
possible, and if you live for character your foun- 
dations will overlast to-morrow. It is when men 
build without moral principle that they need fear 
the future. 

If you have a serene and quiet trust in God, 
without whose notice no sparrow falls to the 
ground, the events of life will arrange themselves 
into a kind of symphony. I do not say that you 
will be able to carry a dear one to the churchyard 



THE PEACE OF THE SOUL. 157 

with a smile on your lips, but I do say that the 
prospect beyond the churchyard will mitigate the 
pain of separation. And I assure you that there 
is nothing in this wide world worth half as much 
as that peace of mind which only faith in the good 
God can give. 



RESTING QUIETLY. 

" I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep." — Ps. iv. 8. 

PEACE and quiet are what the soul longs for, 
but under present conditions it can have very little 
of either. Irritation and worriment produce ab- 
normal states of mind and are to be avoided for 
the sake of physical as well as of spiritual health. 
A perfect poise, that altitude of faith from which 
the ideal man looks down on the perplexities of 
life in calm survey, and looks up to a God who 
from that point of vantage seems close at hand, 
may be difficult of attainment, but it is worth all 
the struggles it will cost. 

A soul which is always at rest, not because the 
experiences of life are restful, but because the ex- 
periences of life cannot seriously disturb it — that 
soul is already in heaven, though the threshold of 
death has not been crossed. We talk too much 
about going to heaven, whereas it would be more 
profitable to discover how heaven can come to us. 

158 



RESTING QUIETLY. I 59 

Daily life is truly a hardship at times, but we ought 
not to open our doors in welcome to the thought 
of hardship. On the other hand, let us bolt the 
door to that thought, dwell on it as little as pos- 
sible, and give our warmest welcome to the thought 
that when we and God are working together all 
burdens are lightened. There is always peace in 
the heart that is conscious of God's presence. It 
is because we do not know that He is with us, 
and more than half doubt that He is anywhere, 
that we become nervous, irritable, uneasy, and 
unhappy. 

I cannot conceive of the Christ as ever feeling 
that God was not in perfect command of the 
world. Had He doubted it for a moment He 
could not have walked so quietly through the Via 
Dolorosa toward the Mount of Crucifixion. While 
not indifferent to the torture that awaited Him, 
His soul was in a region far above bodily pain, 
and He was more concerned about the spiritual 
ignorance which converted the multitude into a 
mob of criminals than about the physical pangs 
He was soon to undergo. You cannot drive a 
spike through a man's thoughts, and if his thoughts 
are sufficiently elevated the spike that is driven 



l6o HERALD SERMONS. 

through hands and feet loses much of its power to 
induce suffering. In other words, it is certainly 
possible for the soul to be so absorbed in eternal 
verities that death at the stake even may seem an 
inconsiderable incident. 

This altitude has not been reached by many in 
the history of mankind, but the fact that it has 
been reached in a single instance is proof of what 
may be attained in greater or less degree by us 
alio We may not climb to the mountain's summit, 
but we may climb high enough up the mountain's 
side to find freedom from the petty cares and daily 
worries which produce mental restlessness and 
bodily disease. 

It is a mistake to suppose that you must con- 
tinually be on the watch for sin, as though it were 
a robber in ambush. At least, that is not the best 
way to make a man strong and courageous. It is 
a thousand times better to tell him to search for 
the immanent God until he finds Him ; to try to 
know Him as one knows a personal friend ; to 
trust Him as one trusts the captain on an ocean 
steamer; for then he will not need to be on the 
lookout for sin, becfause sin and he will have noth- 



RESTING QUIETLY. l6l 

Do you feel it necessary to keep careful watch 
over yourself, lest you may be tempted to invite 
to your table and your family circle the criminals 
who infest the city? Need you be constantly 
warned not to do that sort of thing? You have 
something so much better than what they can offer 
that they have no attraction whatever for you. 

In like manner, you need not be on the lookout 
for sin, provided your trust in God is perfect. 
What you need is not sharper eyes, but a deeper 
faith. It is the faith that protects you, and not 
your watchfulness. Sin cannot soil goodness, for 
the two repel each other and will never come in 
contact. 

You can live in such rare and health-giving air 
that disease cannot touch you, and you can live 
amid such elevating ideas that your soul will be in 
continual peace and the small worries and petty 
perplexities of life will have no power to disturb 
your serenity. 

Do not try to adjust yourself to your environ- 
ment, but fill yourself with faith and love and 
unselfishness, and you will soon find that your 
environment is adjusting itself to you. 

Only one thing is necessary — that is God. If 



1 62 HERALD SERMONS. 

you are in His hands and know you are there, the 
" Peace, be still," has been uttered, and you have 
the only true religion. After that you will be at 
rest inwardly, even though your eyes shed tears. 
Life may not be always easy, but your attitude 
will make its burdens lighter. When there is 
something to look forward to the heart becomes 
quiet ; and if one has a thought from heaven to 
cheer him, he can bear the ills of life with calm 
serenity of mind. 



LOOKING AT YOURSELF. 

" I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testi- 
monies." — Ps. cxix. 59. 

THERE are many things in this world which it 
would be well for you to know, but the best of all 
things is to know yourself; not because you are 
specially worth knowing just at present, but be- 
cause you may be worth knowing by and by, 
since self-knowledge is the starting-point to self- 
improvement. No man can have an exact know- 
ledge of what he is without having also an incentive 
to be something better. 

A watch cannot mend itself. Exquisite bit of 
mechanism though it be, it is not conscious that 
the hair in its cogs prevents it from keeping time. 
Even if it were thus conscious, it would have no 
power to get rid of the hair. Whenever it goes 
wrong it must be taken to a master workman, and 
163 



1 64 HERALD SERMONS. 

he with cunning skill removes the hair and sets the 
watch right. 

A man differs from a watch in one important 
respect. He can remove a spiritual obstruction 
himself, but not until he has taken himself to his 
ideal and made a careful comparison of the two. 
If he has no ideal he is a lost man, for he who 
is entirely satisfied with himself is a prey to all 
manner of temptations. 

As the captain of a vessel cannot say that this 
or that is the right course until he casts his eye 
upon the heavens and notes the position of the 
polar star, so is a man powerless to reach the 
highest end until by careful study he learns what 
the highest end is and what means he has to reach 
it. The captain who has no polar star to guide 
him will sooner or later drive his vessel on the 
rocks, for ignorance never yet supplied the place 
of wisdom ; and the man who has no ideal will 
never become his noblest self, because he does 
not know what that noblest self is. 

Our friends think us better than we are, and 
our enemies think us worse than we are. The 
first exaggerate our virtues, the latter our vices. 
An exact estimate, a perfectly fair appraisement, 



LOOKING AT YOURSELF. 1 65 

is not to be had from anybody in the world, and 
that is to a certain extent a misfortune. If, there- 
fore, we wish to know just who we are and just 
what we are, we must take time to acquire the 
knowledge, and must do the work in solitude. It 
is a matter of serious concern, but you are quite 
capable of achieving the task and it is quite worth 
doing. When you have seriously asked and an- 
swered the questions, What kind of a bundle of 
possibilities am I ? and, What can I do with the 
raw material that is stored within ? and, What help 
is there anywhere in the universe for one who 
wishes to be all there is to be and to do all there 
is to do ? then you tread the border-land of glorious 
mysteries, then you come into personal contact, 
with Almighty God, and then you get a glimpse 
of true religion. No man can do the best without 
first seeing it, but if he once sees it he can hardly 
help trying to do it. One does not waste his days 
to acquire copper if he knows where gold is to be 
had. 

It is because men do not know about the gold 
that they become satisfied with the baser metal, 
and it is because men have been drenched in creeds 
that they cannot see how beautiful and simple and 



1 66 HERALD SERMONS. 

helpful is that kind of religion which Christ was 
sent to preach and to practise. The crudest thing 
that ever happened was to put a speculative theory 
of Christ in the place of Christ's life and words. 
When the creed is hidden behind the Sermon on 
the Mount then all goes well, for in looking at the 
sermon you forget the creed ; but when the Ser- 
mon on the Mount is put behind the creed then 
things must needs go badly. When the setting of 
the gem is so constructed that the gem cannot be 
seen, you practically have no gem, but only a setting. 

The only remedy is for men to think for them- 
selves. He who thinks climbs. To think deeply 
is to find God. If you think your way down into 
the depths of your soul you will hear that soul's 
cry for help, for souls are always crying for help. 
And soon after you have heard the cry you will 
hear the answer. The cry comes from yourself; 
the answer comes from God. 

Lost in the forest, you lift up your voice, and 
through the still air comes the response of the 
guide. The moment you hear each other, you 
and your guide, that moment you and your guide 
approach each other, and it cannot be long before 
you and he will stand face to face. 



LOOKING AT YOURSELF. 1 67 

It is so also in matters of religion. You cannot 
carefully examine yourself without seeing that life 
is a strange mystery and that you need some one 
to lead you aright. You call — that is prayer — and 
Some One hears and answers. The yearning of 
the soul brings all the hosts of heaven about you. 
Then when you and He have met the problem is 
solved, the clouds are reddened with beauty, and 
you have begun the religious life. You cannot be 
without religion so long as you and He are in com- 
pany. For that matter, God's presence is itself 
religion, and you need nothing more. *You will 
find Him when you find yourself, and once found, 
your life will be serener and heaven wiU'open its 
arms in welcome. 



A REASONABLE RELIGION. 

" Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good." — I Thess. v. 21. 

The man whose religion will not stand the test 
of careful thinking has not very much to boast of. 
Feeling has more to do with religion than thinking 
has, but the thinking ought to come first in order 
to give direction to. the feeling. A man's feelings 
should always be indorsed by his brains. You do 
not want a theory of politics which will not hold 
its own against the doubts and questions of your 
neighbors,, and it would be absurd to have a reli- 
gion which refuses to answer your inquiry as to 
its credibility and usefulness. 

A. man should have faith, and he should know 
why he has it. If he is physically ill and receives 
from his physician a prescription which relieves his 
malady, he has a confidence in the doctor which 
is reasonably based, and whenever the malady 
1 68 



A REASONABLE RELIGION. 169 

reappears he very naturally has recourse to that 
same prescription. It is not at all necessary that 
he should know how or from whence or why the 
physician came into that section of the country ; 
neither need he puzzle himself as to the doctor's 
pedigree during the last century or two. These 
are all interesting matters, and if he has time and 
inclination it will do no harm to enter that field of 
exploration, but they have practically no relevancy 
to his disease or its cure. If you were to make 
the rash assertion that you would not take the 
remedy until the doctor recited all the incidents of 
his past life and made you acquainted with the 
secrets of his experience, you would be a strangely 
unreasonable creature. The important question 
is not when or where the doctor was born, but 
whether he understands your case and can restore 
you to health. 

Now a great many persons are unwilling to ac- 
cept the providence of God, because they cannot 
see how He exists and in what way the providence 
acts. He must not only do them good, but ex- 
plain how He does it. You might just as well say 
to the apple-seed, " I know that there is a mys- 
terious life in you, and that when put into the 



170 HERALD SERMONS. 

ground you can burst your shell, push up slender 
shoots, grow into a beautiful tree, and bear rich 
fruit; but I refuse to plant you until I know how 
all this is done." You would not regard such a 
man as a reasonable creature. Your reply to his 
statement would be that he is both foolish and 
stupid not to avail himself of a delicious product 
because he cannot tell how it came. If the thing 
itself is proved beneficial by experience, then the 
more of it he can acquire the better. If he wishes 
to study the occult mystery of growth in his leisure 
hours, no one will say him nay ; but it is not 
absolutely necessary to know anything about an 
apple except that it hangs on the branch and that 
he has a right to pluck, eat, and enjoy it. 

But some folks put theology first and religion 
second, whereas the world would be better if re- 
ligion were put first and men were allowed to deal 
in theological speculation much or little, according 
to inclination. Religion is the apple on the tree. 
What is called " getting religion " is nothing more 
than eating the apple and by that means convinc- 
ing yourself of its value. Theology, on the other 
hand, is an inquiry as to the various and subtle 
natural forces which have combined to produce the 



A REASONABLE RELIGION. I J I 

fruit, and as to the method of their activity. I say, 
therefore, that theology is the luxury of the few, 
of the inquisitive and scholarly few, but that reli- 
gion, which consists of eating the apple, is the 
divine privilege of all. If it is not reasonable to 
judge of the worth of anything by the effect re- 
sulting from its use, then I must confess to being 
greatly puzzled. 

But your doubts? Well, doubts come mostly 
from speculating about matters which no finite 
being can settle beyond dispute. No one ever 
lived without doubts. It would be an absolute 
impossibility to do so, and I am not at all sure 
that it would be desirable to do so. If you have 
never doubted, it is probably because you have 
never thought very deeply. Science and philoso- 
phy are full of doubts, and these doubts have led 
to unexpected discoveries. When the ordinary 
man begins to think about God and providence 
and prayer and heaven, he becomes dazed and 
bewildered, just as astronomers in the time of 
Galileo were dazed and bewildered by the innu- 
merable worlds overhead which played hide-and- 
seek with them. The time may come when we 
can uncover the mysteries of the Infinite as science 



172 HERALD SERMONS. 

has uncovered the courses of the stars, but cer- 
tainly the time is not yet. The time may also 
come when our spiritual vision will be so devel- 
oped that we shall see what the prophet saw — 
hosts of angels in the air; but that millennial period 
has not yet arrived. 

What, then, is the standard by which to esti- 
mate the value of religion, and what kind of religion 
would you call reasonable? If you experiment 
with the principles which Christ announced, and 
find that they work untold benefit, that they make 
you sympathetic, honest, generous, noble, and 
manly, are you not reasonable if you adopt them 
as the policy of your life ? On the contrary, would 
you not be unreasonable if you failed to do so? 
We have many doubts about the theology of our 
fathers, but have we any doubt at all concerning 
the beautiful faith which made them brave and 
strong in times of great trial ? 

The question is easily decided. If you take the 
doctor's prescription and it either relieves or cures, 
be sensible enough to avail yourself of that doctor's 
services, and though there be a mystery about his 
birthplace, your confidence in him need not be 
disturbed, Take the apple that hangs within reach 



A REASONABLE RELIGION. I 73 

and eat it. If it quenches your thirst and satisfies 
your appetite, it makes no difference who planted 
the tree or how the fruit came from the blossom. 
A reasonable faith in religion does not depend 
on your knowledge of all the secrets of the uni- 
verse, but on your knowledge of what that religion 
will do for you. In other words, the only true 
test of religious faith is to be found in personal 
experience. Mere argument amounts to nothing; 
a fair trial settles the matter beyond cavil. Those 
who have tested it most severely prize it most 
highly. 



A BETTER RELIGION. 

" The Lord our God be with us, as He was with our fathers." 
— I Kings viii. 57. 

It is said that in the material universe higher 
conditions are being slowly evolved from lower 
conditions, and that the earth is a better place to 
live on than in the long ago. 

It is said also that this evolutionary process is 
constantly going on in human society, that new 
forms of government arise from the old just as a 
blossom comes from a seed, that laws, customs, 
public morality, modes of living, are undergoing a 
change for the better, and that the world is sweeter, 
cleaner, purer, nobler, and kindlier than it has ever 
been before. 

Furthermore, it is said that what we call progress 

does not show any fatigue, but is as vigorous and 

hopeful as ever, that what has been accomplished 

is but a faint prophecy of what the distant future 

i74 



A BETTER RELIGION. I 75 

will witness, and that the ideal man is on a summit 
which will sometime be reached, but is now en- 
veloped in cloud. 

If in all things else the good is being changed 
into the better, surely religion is not to be excepted. 
If we put on new garments elsewhere, we ought 
not to wear the same old soiled clothing when we 
go to church. If we have learned some of the 
startling secrets of nature, we ought also to dis- 
cover new secrets in the soul. One cannot say of 
religion alone that it is fenced within certain narrow 
limits, that our fathers explored it thoroughly and 
there is nothing more for their children to know. 

It seems to me that nothing is more wonderful 
than the progress which has been made in our 
knowledge of spiritual matters during the last few 
generations. There is no subject on which in- 
quiry is more acute or which appeals more ur- 
gently to the attention of mankind. Men not only 
acknowledge the necessity for larger faith, but 
they have a kind of hunger and thirst for it. The 
longing to know more about soul as distinct from 
body, and about the future to which we are all 
hastening, is not only ardent, but even pathetic. 
There is a prevailing conviction that we are on the 



176 HERALD SERMONS. 

verge of some glorious discoveries in this direction, 
and so we strain our eyes to catch the first glimpse 
of them. 

More than this, there never has been a time 
when the Bible was read with more intense curi- 
osity than now. It is no longer read in the search 
for dogma, but as a repository of spiritual truths 
which have not hitherto been understood. We 
have regarded the Book as a treatise of theology, 
since theology has occupied the pulpit to the 
exclusion of nearly everything else, and for that 
reason it has practically fallen into disuse. That 
is the stern, hard fact — the Bible has been regarded 
with reverential indifference, because it has been 
misinterpreted and misrepresented. But the hour 
is at hand when this severely practical age will 
make a new use of it. The day of dogma has 
gone by and the day of high and holy living has 
begun to dawn. 

The Christ is being revealed to us in a clearer 
light. Old things are passing away and all things 
will become new. We are getting closer to the 
Lord's person, and the little we have newly learned 
prompts us to kneel and kiss the hem of His gar- 
ment. We see that He was the exponent of laws 



A BETTER RELIGION. I 77 

which, when fully understood and applied, will 
make men physically healthy and enable them to 
live on so high a plane that only a veil of gauze 
will separate them from heaven. He trod that 
eminence and assured us that what He did we can 
do also. 

It is true that even Jesus wept, but what a dif- 
ference between His tears and ours! I am even 
inclined to think that He wept not so much on 
account of the death of His friend as because the 
sufferers from this affliction took so low and meager 
a view of it. What was death to Him? Only a 
transfer from the valley to the hilltop. When we 
stand where He stood and when we see what He 
saw, our grief will not be what it is now. 

Yes ; and when we make His outlook and up- 
look our own, we shall open the soul's windows 
for God's streaming light to pour in. These petty 
ambitions will dissipate themselves, these pains 
and sorrows, which are so largely created by our 
doubts and fears, will subside, selfishness will slink 
away, and the dear consciousness of God's presence 
will make us quiet under His providence. 

Then the world will indeed have a religion and 
the soul will find safe anchorage. That religion 



178 HERALD SERMONS. 

will be like a current of electricity, chasing all 
maladies away and giving men the vigor and en- 
thusiasm of eternal youth. The eyes will behold 
wondrous things and the heart will leap for joy. 
Once know God as He is, once catch a glimpse of 
the real Christ, and we shall live within a stone's 
throw of heaven all the time. 



SOULS AND BODIES. 

" That ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 
unto God." — Rom. xii. I. 

" He shall give delight unto thy soul." — Prov. xxix. 17. 

THE relation between a man's body and his soul 
may be likened to that between a violin and the 
man who plays on it. 

A skilful player can bring good music out of a 
poor instrument, but he cannot do his best work 
unless the violin is capable of expressing the har- 
monies he has heard in his dreams. 

In like manner the best instrument in the world 
produces poor music in the hands of a tyro. He 
handles something which he does not appreciate, 
and which to a certain extent loses its value be- 
cause he cannot make it do what it is capable of 
doing. 

The ideal music is made by a skilled player with 
a perfect violin. 

So the soul and body must work together if the 
179 



l8o HERALD SERMONS. 

best results are to be attained. As God made it 
the body is the noblest conceivable residence for 
the soul during this preliminary part of its career. 
It was not His intention, it was not a part of His 
plan, that the ailments of the body should interfere 
with the normal development of the soul. If they 
do, it is because some natural law has been broken. 
It is impossible to think of God as responsible for 
a body that is imperfect, and equally impossible 
to believe that a body could ever become imper- 
fect or defective if God's wishes had been observed 
and His commands obeyed. 

We have fallen from the grace of physical whole- 
ness. The mere animal is better off than man in 
this respect.' It follows its instincts, which make 
no mistakes, while we follow, not so much our 
reason, which would keep us from going far astray, 
as our passions and appetites, which are capricious 
and reckless. The lion is perfect within his limi- 
tations ; he lives without worry and dies without 
pain ; he is like an exquisite piece of machinery, 
which does its work with ease until the power that 
drives it is checked. That will sometime be true 
of the human race. When we learn what it is that 
produces our maladies, and have strength of will 



SOULS AND BODIES. 151 

to avoid it, we too shall live in health until the 
body, like an old house, tumbles down and the soul 
seeks a better home. 

But the reform must commence in the mind and 
the heart. We have already begun to see that a 
man with impure thoughts cannot have a perfect 
body, and that there is a preservative element in 
high and holy thinking. Perhaps I may venture 
to go still further and say that when the mind has 
a vision of the perfect life, the body itself will be 
somewhat affected thereby, and that the physical 
functions will make an effort to repair themselves 
when the soul consciously and practically lives and 
moves and has its being in Him whom no evil can 
touch. 

I mean simply this, — and the truth of what I 
say will be recognized by all, — that disease is 
wholly abnormal, and that the only natural state 
is a state of health. We are not physically what 
we ought to be because we are not morally what 
we should be. The lower part of a man's nature 
has caused every malady from which the world 
suffers, and no effectual remedy can be found until 
the lower is made subject to the higher. When 
men come to be more faithful, more loving and 



lS2 HERALD SERMONS. 

tender and charitable, the inheritance of nobler 
qualities will slowly obliterate our present heritage 
of physical evil, and the perfect man will be seen 
on the earth. 

The spring of all issues, good and bad, is in the 
heart and mind. Give me a perfect body to begin 
with, and if God's laws are my laws I shall keep 
that body perfect to the end of life's pilgrimage. 
Feed me on unworthy thoughts, stimulate my 
animal passions, make me selfish and greedy of 
forbidden pleasures, and the crooked mind will in 
time make my body crooked, for in the long run 
the mind is the body's master. 

As I take my place on this standpoint and look 
abroad on human life, I am oppressively impressed 
with the fact that what men need more than any- 
thing else — more than all things else — is the reli- 
gion of the great Master of our souls. Give me 
no man's creed as a substitute ; do not ask me to 
drink of the painted river on the canvas when I 
am thirsty, but give me that living water — the 
" water of life," it is significantly called — which is 
the secret of Christ and of His power. I want to 
know Him personally, and care little to know 
simply about Him. I must have that which He had, 



SOULS AND BODIES. 1 83 

must live the life He lived, must share His thought 
of God, His trust in the Father ; then my faith will 
make me whole, body and soul, and keep me so. 
If God dwells in me there is no room for evil there. 

The religion of the day is too formal and per- 
functory. It is not real and genuine, but adulter- 
ated with all sorts of notions and theories. It is 
the Christ we need, who could say, " I and My 
Father are one," and who prayed that we might 
be one with Him in a like fashion. 

God is willing, but man is unwilling. There is 
a conduit that leads from the mountain spring into 
the home, from God to the human heart. So long 
as that conduit is in perfect repair it will furnish 
all the spring- water we can use ; but if the conduit 
is broken and the refreshing water escapes or only 
falls a dripping stream, drop by drop, the gener- 
osity of the spring counts for nothing. 

In very truth, I think, our formalism and folly 
have broken the conduit between us and God's 
great love. Our religion consists of only a few 
drops. Mend the conduit, and all the love of 
heaven is at our service. Healthy bodies and 
noble souls will be the result when we accept the 
Christ in His fullness. 



THE SOUL'S POSSESSIONS. 

" For all things are yours." — I Cor. iii. 21. 

Of course St. Paul had something very definite 
in his mind when he made so strong an assertion 
as this, but what it was the world does not yet 
fully know. There is apparently a kind of mys- 
ticism in the text, and though two thousand years 
have nearly passed, we have only just begun to 
appreciate its significance. If we shall ever be able 
to accept the statement as literally true, and to 
assimilate that truth in our spiritual life as the body 
assimilates food and is made strong and healthy 
thereby, we shall have a religion so practical and 
so priceless that we shall depend upon it as we 
depend on the oxygen in the air to give vitality to 
the blood. 

In his second letter to the Corinthians he ex- 
plains, but in a way that is somewhat vague. 
When this wonderful ownership of all things has 
184 



THE SOUL'S POSSESSIONS. 1 85 

been accomplished, he says, we may still be 
" troubled on every side," but we shall not be 
" distressed " ; we shall be " perplexed, but not in 
despair"; we may be "cast down," but we shall 
not be " destroyed." 

Such a prophecy stimulates our curiosity, if not 
our ambition. If it is possible to develop a state 
of mind which can look down calmly and hopefully 
on the evils which invade our lives, and cheerfully 
regard them as a part of our discipline so necessary 
to our welfare that we trust their dispensation to 
One whose wisdom and love we cannot doubt, then 
two results must naturally follow : first, we shall see 
that our heretofore conception of religion has been 
exceedingly defective and erroneous, and second, 
that the religion of the future will be more beau- 
tiful than anything the world has ever dreamed of. 

What is this marvelous ownership of which the 
apostle speaks? It is evidently ownership by the 
soul, not by legal contract. Let us think a mo- 
ment. When a man says he owns a fine tract in 
the country, dotted with hills and lakes, overarched 
by clouds in the daytime and by the studded 
firmament at night, what does he mean? Is it 
possible for him to own the grandeur of the pros- 



1 86 HERALD SERMONS. 

pect or have certain other rights which no law 
can ignore ? Do his legal documents debar you 
from the delights which the extended landscape 
affords, or do you share with him the undulating 
beauty of the land and the shimmering glory of 
the sky? Can he keep these things for himself 
alone? Is it not true that the best part of his 
possessions is just as much yours as his, and very 
much more yours unless his ability to appreciate 
is equal to your own? The real owner of these 
things is God, and there never yet was a landscape 
on which the whole world did not have a lien. 
No man living can say that it is all his,' for the 
human law is powerless to deprive you of the right 
to look and to have your soul warmed to worship 
by what you see. It is your privilege as well as 
his to say, " This is all mine," and his registered 
deed counts for very little. The truly noble souls 
literally own the whole earth — its beauty, its glory, 
and the aspirations which it fosters. All other 
ownership is petty in comparison and fosters the 
greed of gain, which is a disease. 

When, therefore, you say of a man that he is 
rich, you are far from the truth if you merely refer 
to his material possessions. Money makes no one 



THE SOUL'S POSSESSIONS. 1 87 

rich. The rich man is he who owns his soul and 
is proud of that ownership. You cannot put real 
wealth into your pocket or into a bank of deposit. 
No matter who says you nay, you may have 
countless dollars and still be a beggar ; but if you 
have ideas, and moral principles, and rectitude of 
character, and eyes that seek and find the beauty 
which God has scattered everywhere, you are rich 
and your life is worth something to yourself and 
to others. 

Is it not possible to carry this principle so far 
that a soul can say, " My God, my Father," in a 
possessive sense? May it not be true that what- 
ever God has is ours, since He is so willing to give 
it to us? Is there anything He will not give us if 
we know how to reach forth our hands for it and 
to use it for our advantage? If a soul dwells in 
God, and if God therefore dwells in a soul, are 
there any limits to that soul's attainments? 

If we were thus godlike, disease would flee from 
the body as night flies before the rising sun, and 
the same natural law would be operative in both 
cases; our attitude toward the world would no 
longer be one of defiance or desperation, as it is 
now, but, calm and quiet, we should meet our 



1 88 HERALD SERMONS. 

fortune as the Christ met His, and that very atti- 
tude would dissipate half the ills from which we 
suffer and give us strength to bear the rest ; our 
tears at separation would lose their bitterness in 
the hope, or rather the certainty, of reunion ; heaven 
would become such a grand and vivid reality that 
the roughness of the path which leads thereto 
would seem of little consequence. 

We shall never know what true religion is until 
we understand that " all things " may be ours, and 
we shall never really become religious until we 
have entered upon the possession of earth and sky 
and God and Christ and whatever may be included 
in the "all things" of St. Paul. 

Think of living from day to day undisturbed by 
the world's envyings and heartburnings, standing 
on so high a level of thought and purpose that 
heaven itself opens its doors every now and agaim 
that we may catch a glimpse of what awaits us. 
That is what God would have us do, that is what 
the Christ actually did, and that is what the ideal 
man.can do and will do. Our present conception of 
spiritual'possibilities is crude, but the time is not far 
distant when men will see so much of the otherworld 
that this world will be transfigured and glorified. 



DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES. 

" Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season ... ye 
are in heaviness through manifold temptations." — I Pet. i. 6. 

It is a curious fact that in the New Testament, 
which is a revelation of God to man and equally a 
revelation of man to himself, the word " duty " 
should appear only twice. 

In the popular conception of religion there is 
one very grave mistake — a mistake which has done 
much to disturb our filial relations with the Al- 
mighty, and to m^ke the religious life a tiresome 
routine, a sort of day's hard work for the sake of 
the wages to be received at sunset. Nothing could 
be farther from the heart of the Christ, and nothing 
could more effectually check the generous ardor 
with which tried and troubled souls should seek 
the divine presence for advice and succor. 

If religion is not a satisfactory thing in itself, 
just as a cooling breeze is satisfactory in August 
189 



190 HERALD SERMONS. 

or a blazing fire on the hearthstone in January, 
then its value is very seriously diminished. And 
if one does not feel that the practice of religion 
brings its own reward here and now without ref- 
erence to the future, then he misinterprets the 
purpose of God and all his wine is turned to water. 

The word " duty " means obligatory service, and 
seems to imply that it is not our choice to render 
it, but that we must do so for fear of consequences. 
The man who obeys for any such reason is living 
on a very low plane. His conception of God is 
more or less that of a taskmaster rather than of a 
Father who notes even the fall of a sparrow. So 
long as we view religion from that standpoint we 
shall live beyond earshot of heaven, clinging to 
the present and dreading the future. 

We are called the " children ff God." I do not 
imagine this to be a figure of speech, but the state- 
ment of a literal truth. Well, to draw an illustra- 
tion from home life, would you say that it is the 
duty of a son to love his mother, or of a daughter 
to love her father? Should the boy feel that while 
he ought to love his mother it is very difficult to 
do so, because if he followed the bent of his na- 
ture he would be indifferent to her? 



DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES. 191 

Would it be possible to say that it is a man's 
duty to be grateful for some great benefit which 
is conferred upon him? The word " duty " seems 
to be peculiarly out of place under such circum- 
stances, for it contains a libel on human nature. 
He cannot help being grateful, for he is so consti- 
tuted that gratitude rises to the surface without an 
effort, and if he were not grateful he would be 
something less than a man. 

In like manner, it is not a man's duty to love 
God ; it is his inalienable right and his inestimable 
privilege. From the moment when he appreciates 
God's love for him his heart goes out in unre- 
strained confidence and trust, and that confidence 
and trust are the corner-stones of the temple in 
which he worships. And when he comes to see 
what this life is for, and how the Almighty has so 
arranged events that he can weave them into a 
wedding-garment to wear in heaven, then he has 
the religion which Christ preached, and his grati- 
tude, so far from being an irksome duty, is as 
irrepressible as the waters that bubble from the 
spring on the mountain-side. 

While in our relations with God there are no 
duties, but only privileges, in our relations with 



192 HERALD SERMONS. 

ourselves and with our fellow-men there are many 
of them, and it often requires an effort to perform 
them. For example, it is a duty to love our 
enemies, and that is hard; it is a duty to bless 
them that curse us, and that is not easy ; and it is 
a duty to resist the temptations which creep into 
the soul to corrupt it. It is something of a task 
to keep one's self unspotted from the world, for 
the spirit of evil knocks at the door with gay im- 
pudence, and makes a thousand promises with no 
intention of keeping any one of them. 

But even these duties would be transformed 
into privileges if we lived on a higher religious 
plane. Christ alone possessed a perfectly rounded 
system of religion. He had the whole, while we 
enjoy only a small part. It was not an irksome 
task for Him to pray, "Father, forgive them; for 
they know not what they do " — not in any sense 
a duty. His nature was such that He could not 
have done otherwise. He lived spiritually on the 
mountain-top, while we are in the valley. Our 
religion, beautiful as it is, has still an element of 
the barbaric in it. God is near us, always near us, 
but we have not yet invited Him to occupy our 
house. We can be grateful when He does what 



DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES. 193 

we think He ought to do, but when He does what 
contravenes our wishes, our state of mind is pe- 
culiar and forbidding. 

The ideal religion ! If the first gray streaks of 
dawn are so inspiring, what will be the perfect 
day? When universal love of God gives rise to 
universal love of man, and real religion first checks, 
then destroys, the selfishness which is our bane, and 
enables us to cling to Him with even profounder 
filial affection when dear ones are being borne to 
the churchyard or when misfortune robs us of the 
comforts of life, — and that time is surely coming, 
• — then duties will be altogether abolished, and we 
shall do His will simply and only because it is 
better than our own will, and do it gladly. 

When we exchange our plan for His plan, it 
will be like dropping a pebble to pick up a dia- 
mond — like laying aside our untuned harps to listen 
to the music of the angel choir. God knows best. 
To believe that is to be perfect, even as your 
Father in heaven is perfect. 



RELIGION IS LOVE. 

" Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." — Rom. xiii. 10. 

All the world believes that love is better than 
hate. It never has been and never can be a sub- 
ject of debate. It is perfectly clear that if love 
and revenge and selfishness were personified and 
made sculptors, and each were given a block of 
marble to shape into his ideal, Love's statue would 
be more beautiful to look upon than the works of 
the other two. 

If each were given a violin and told to put his 
inmost thought into musical expression, the lis- 
teners would very quickly draw near to Love and 
desert the others. 

That fact is a tribute to human nature. It proves 

beyond a peradventure that we all take delight in 

what is highest and noblest, even though in our 

daily life our practice is defective. We know what 

194 



RELIGION IS LOVE. I95 

we ought to do, and we wish we had the strength 
of will to do it, though we may never make the 
effort. The ideal is in the heart, but covered up 
by the rubbish of worldliness. In other words, we 
have never done ourselves justice, and no one 
knows it better than we. 

What is it, then, that the world lacks? Only 
one thing, and yet that one thing is everything. 
St. Paul calls it love, and he intimates that when 
a man has this quality of character he has all that 
can decide his fate both here and hereafter. 

It is " the fulfilling of the law," and that phrase 
is curiously inclusive. If you have love of God 
and love for your fellow-men, you have the secret 
of human happiness and an open sesame to the 
future. God will never reject a soul which has 
acted from this motive, for it will make a man 
angelic, and the proper place for angels is heaven. 

When Christ talked to the people who gathered 
on hillside and by lake-shore, He proclaimed the 
simplest form of religion that ever found utterance. 
There was nothing in His language that the hum- 
blest Judean peasant could not understand. He 
advocated no theory and debated no theological 
propositions ; but He reached down to the very 



196 HERALD SERMONS. 

center of human life and gave us a truth which no 
duration of time can wear threadbare, which is 
fresh and beautiful in all climates, among all races, 
and in all ages. 

Love God and you cannot go far wrong. Love 
your neighbor and your years will be set to music. 
You cannot love God without trusting Him, and 
you cannot love your neighbor without developing 
that side of your character which is noblest. 

The world's universal crime is selfishness. We 
have educated it until it has become a mania. It 
controls our thoughts, our plans, our actions. 
Events are simply sponges from which we squeeze 
some benefit for ourselves, and we carry this so far 
that the rights of others are utterly ignored and 
self- gratification becomes the only god who claims 
our hearty worship. 

And what is the selfish man, after all ? A mere 
wreck of a noble soul, its divine possibilities 
chained, cramped, handicapped, muzzled. He 
feeds on plenty without a thought of those who 
starve; he laughs without a glance at those who. 
weep ; he reaches out his hand to grasp resources 
which he does not need, and piles up wealth which 
he cannot spend. The injunction, " Freely ye 



RELIGION IS LOVE. 197 

have received, freely give," is so changed that he 
prays, " Freely give to me, and I will give nothing 
to any one." 

Suppose you could put a genuine love into the 
hearts of all men. We should have a very heaven 
on earth. You would double the sum of human 
happiness, and the happiest of us all would be he 
who had alleviated suffering by some gift from 
his abundance. I am not sure that God Himself 
would not walk and talk with men as in the days 
of yore, but I am sure that the gates of the New 
Jerusalem would swing on their hinges to let the 
angels out on a visit to the loved ones here below. 

A thousand beliefs will not make you an honest 
or a pure-hearted man. All the theologic formulas 
which famous councils have ever passed are power- 
less to achieve that result. When we make the- 
ology the standard of excellence we reverse God's 
order. He who believes as others do is not, there- 
fore, a Christian ; but he whose heart is full of love, 
though refused admission to every church in the 
land, though wandering in odd byways because 
the King's thoroughfare has been closed to him 
by ecclesiastical interdiction, travels ever in the 
sweet companionship of Christ and will some day 



198 HERALD SERMONS. 

be with Him in glory. To have the Christ spirit, 
rising each morning with gratitude, sleeping each 
night in the consciousness of God's protecting care, 
because the day's work has been God's work and 
not your own — that is salvation already secured. 

Your complexion, your race, your social position, 
your sect, your mode of worship, your wealth or 
poverty, are matters of no consequence whatever. 
No one in heaven ever thinks of such trivial pecu- 
liarities. Do you love yourself last? is the Lord 
your employer, or do you conduct your business 
in your own behalf alone? are you kind to your 
kind? These are the only important questions. 
If you have not this love, your life is but a tinkling 
cymbal; it is a mistake, it is a crime. If you have 
it, you have fulfilled the law, and when the right 
time comes you will find your wedding-garments 
in readiness for you. The soul of religion is love, 
and all else is mere body — worthless material, 
which will count for nothing in the future. 



BE OF GOOD CHEER. 

" Thou hast put gladness in my heart." — Ps. iv. "J. 

If one would make his life profitable and happy, 
he must be at great pains to fit himself to his cir- 
cumstances or environment. A vast deal depends 
on the successful endeavor to do so, because in 
that way only can he maintain in ordinary times 
a calm and cheerful, or in the stress of sorrow a 
resigned, state of mind. 

Not that he need be entirely satisfied with his 
environment, for it is also his duty to look forward 
to something better and to make such changes as 
ambition may prompt or an honest effort achieve. 
But to be forever discontented with what you have 
is to lessen, or possibly to lose, the power to make 
the best of it. 

There is a kind of restlessness which is almost 
godlike, for it implies that the soul is capable of 
199 



200 HERALD SERMONS. 

indefinite progress ; and as the clothes of youth are 
outgrown in manhood and we purchase others 
which fit our increased stature, so the soul must 
change its garments and put on larger thoughts 
and projects and hopes. There is another kind of 
discontent, which is thoroughly depressing and is 
therefore to be avoided, because it draws the cur- 
tains down and forces you to sit in the dark. 

When a man says, " This is well enough for to- 
day, but to-morrow I shall have more and better," 
he is in just the state of mind that makes the more 
and the better possible. But when one feels that 
his circumstances are not only a hardship, but also 
an injustice, he can neither get out of his present 
the best there is in it, nor look forward to the 
future with anything like good cheer. The people 
who indulge in this latter train of thought are a 
very bad sort of Christians. They are at odds 
with themselves and with the Almighty ; they 
spend so much time in wishing that things were 
not as they are that there is no time left in which 
to use their experience to the best advantage. 

If we would recognize how much we have to be 
grateful for instead of finding fault because there 
are those who seem to be better off than we, we 



BE OF GOOD CHEER. 201 

should find a deal of comfort to which we are now 
strangers. The difference to a man's soul, to his 
temper, to his general disposition, and, not least of 
all, to his bodily health, between the conviction 
that he can do great things with what he has, and 
the conviction that he can do nothing because he 
has not what he thinks he ought to have, is prac- 
tically the difference between a life sweetened 
by faith and effort, and a life embittered by an 
estrangement between himself and the very nature 
of things. 

It is true that there are human beings who seem 
to be greatly favored by circumstances or by the 
accident of birth, and also true that some have 
very little capital of opportunity. Why this is so 
no student of nature or of theology has been able 
to tell us. It is one of the puzzles of creation, and 
we can but guess at a solution. Perhaps by and 
by, when we reach a higher vantage-ground and 
look back on these fleeting years, we shall be as 
grateful as we are now critical. The matter is not 
explained either by Christianity or by any of the 
natural religions which have swayed mankind. 

I leave the problem, therefore, to take care of 
itself, and ask my soul this far more important 



202 HERALD SERMONS. 

question : How can I get out of what I have all 
the enjoyment and good cheer it is capable of 
affording me ? If my neighbor rides while I walk, 
if he has plenty and I have little, aye, if he has 
robust health and I bear about with me a thorn 
in the flesh, I would rather pray for a contented 
spirit than waste my energy in envy of that neigh- 
bor. I do not care how humble one's circumstances 
may be, there is certainly something beautiful and 
holy to be found within the narrow circle. The 
poorest man who ever lived, who had not where 
to lay His head, who was laid in a manger at His 
birth, and who died on the cross, could find a 
world of beauty in a flower and a helpful truth in 
the flight of birds. 

We think too much of our environment and not 
enough of our destiny. Wealth has very little to 
do with happiness. Money gives nothing to the 
heart, can purchase neither a moral principle nor 
an aspiration. Strip the millions from one man, 
take away the poverty from another, pull off every- 
thing until you get down to the naked soul, and 
you find that the only real difference is a difference 
of character. Environment counts for nothing, but 
character counts for everything. 



BE OF GOOD CHEER. 203 

I say this, therefore : give no attention to what 
others are able to do or to enjoy, but devote your- 
self to doing and enjoying all that is possible in 
your own small life. There never yet was a night 
without a star, and if you search for the star and 
do what you can to ignore the darkness, you will 
find more happiness than you ever dreamed of. 
The habit of looking at the bright side is well 
worth cultivating; it is a kind of practical Chris- 
tianity which the world knows too little about. 
Religion is not worth much if it encourages your 
discontent ; for, after all, if you and the Lord keep 
together you will always be in good company and 
always have something to make you glad and 
cheerful. What is around you will be brightened 
by what is above you, and to-day, cloudy though 
it be, will be made radiant by the hopes that come 
from the great to-morrow. 



SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES. 

" For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." — Luke 
xvii. 21. 

There is an immense amount of unconscious 
make-believe in our acceptance of religious truth. 
We assent to it theoretically, but make no use of 
it practically. With most of us religion is up in 
the clouds ; we have not yet learned its value as a 
dynamic force in daily life. What we most of all 
need is to really believe what we say we believe. 

If one tells us that we can " abide under the 
shadow of the Almighty," we regard the expres- 
sion as very beautiful rhetorically, but repudiate it 
as the statement of a simple fact. If the preacher 
recites the text in which the Master says, " Greater 
things than these shall ye do," it seems impossible 
to believe that He meant exactly what He said. 
Though the statement is constantly reiterated that 
204 



SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES. 205 

angels guard our footsteps and are always within 
hearing distance of our cry, we merely think we 
believe, for it is a belief without full appreciation. 
It is all more or less dreamy, and we are very far, 
though the world has been pondering the subject 
for two hundred generations, from accepting the 
nearness of heaven or the ability and willingness 
of God to exercise a providence over our lives. 
In a word, we walk around the outside of the 
temple and admire its architecture, but we have 
not yet opened the door and explored its interior. 
It is not so in some other matters. For example, 
when some gifted seer experiments with steam or 
electricity, and tells us how they both can be util- 
ized to make life more comfortable and to furnish 
us with unexpected conveniences, we always take 
him seriously and literally. We apply steam as a 
means of transportation and use it in the ten thou- 
sand ways in which it will subserve our commercial 
and domestic purposes. We accept the assertions 
of the electrician literally, and in full confidence 
stretch the mystic wires from ocean to ocean. 
That confidence is 'repaid by a series of miracles, 
for the harnessed lightning is a willing servitor, 
carrying our words under Atlantic waves and across 



206 HERALD SERMONS. 

continents with inconceivable speed. In this way 
life is practically prolonged, for we can accomplish 
in our seventy years more than the old sages 
dreamed of in their seven hundred. 

There have been those who have had the same 
kind of implicit faith in religious truths and who 
have utilized them in the same way. We look at 
them with wonder, and with something of envy 
also, confessing that, while physical laws properly 
applied may produce admirable results, it is still 
more admirable to capture a spiritual law and 
make it the servant of a divine purpose. In the 
early days of Christianity strong men and weak 
women were cast into lions' dens or tortured to 
death by devilish contrivances. They faced their 
fate with a smile, because their faith was an om- 
nipotent reality. They believed in God just as we 
believe in the law of gravitation, and were just as 
sure of going to heaven as we are that the sun 
will rise to-morrow — so sure that they would not 
compromise one jot or tittle in order to save their 
lives. If you say, as the agnostic does, that their 
faith was nothing but a dream, my reply is that 
the dream which can make such heroes of men 
and women is worth all the so-called truths in the 



SPIRITUAL POSSIBILITIES. 207 

world if they serve no better end than to make us 
cowards. These men and women died with God 
in their hearts, and human nature never rises to 
such a pitch of heroism unless it has that kind of 
faith. The divine in humanity is developed by 
faith rather than by intellectual attainment. The 
most important part of a man is his soul, and if 
that stands plumb nothing can go crooked. 

I believe that we all should have what the mar- 
tyrs had — not a conventional, but a real trust in 
the Almighty, a trust like that which the sea-cap- 
tain has in his compass. It may not be easy to 
attain, but we ought to be satisfied with nothing 
less. Without it we drift, but with it we weather 
all storms and are headed for heaven. 

You need it in all the emergencies of life, and 
there are many which try the soul to its utmost. 
It is not easy to live well, to resignedly put your 
shoulders to a heavy burden, to meet temptation 
squarely and thrust it from your path, to bury a 
dear one and feel that the best thing has happened 
for all concerned. Easy ? Is there any task that 
will compare with it? Do you not know that it is 
harder to acquire an athletic soul than an athletic 
body? Because it is harder you need to take 



208 HERALD SERMONS. 

certain simple religious truths and feed on them 
until they are thoroughly assimilated with your 
spirit. If God is taken from the realm of myths 
and made a downright fact, if heaven is not up in 
the clouds, but all around you, if love never dies, 
and cannot be destroyed by death or changed in 
any manner, and if these glorious revelations are 
not guesses, but certainties, what is your life but 
a school, in which angels are teachers, and what 
is this old earth but a spiral staircase leading to 
eternity ? If religion is good for anything it is 
good for everything, and no man is at his best 
until spiritual truth is just as practical and practi- 
cable as any fact in physics. After that all will 
go well, but not before. 



YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE. 

' " Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven." — Matt. vii. 21. 

WHAT is the chief object to be sought for in 
this life ? What one thing stands preeminent 
above all others as the thing to be attained at all 
costs and hazards ? 

Is it wealth ? Then there is a radical weakness 
in the structure of the world, for not all can pos- 
sess it — an element of unfairness which throws 
discredit on the Creator. The Christian religion 
must be based on an illusion ; for it teaches us that 
God is equally the Father of all His children, and 
the fatherhood which robs some in order to enrich 
others may serve such gods as dwelt on Olympus, 
the creatures of caprice, but cannot be an attribute 
of a being all- wise and all-powerful. 

Besides, a little observation shows that there is 
209 



2IO HERALD SERMONS. 

much more happiness in the work of acquiring 
wealth than its mere possession can bestow. Money 
does not always enlarge a man ; on the contrary, 
it frequently belittles him. It has more than once 
happened that as a man grew rich he grew small. 
The large-hearted boy who is so eager in the pur- 
suit of money that he can see nothing else worth 
toiling for often becomes a narrow-hearted man. 

Indeed, it is a trite truth that a great fortune is 
a dangerous inheritance. A pair of willing hands 
with poverty prophesy a better future for youth 
than a pair of hands with nothing to do and a 
fountain from which dollars can be dipped in ex- 
haustless abundance. God never bestows a greater 
blessing than when He gives one an environment 
which puts him on his mettle and makes it impos- 
sible for him to have what he wants until he has 
earned it. 

Out of hardness and stern necessity, out of pain 
and suffering, out of frequent disappointment, 
comes the best thing the human mind can aspire 
to — a perfect character. Your reputation is what 
men suppose you to be ; your character is what 
you are ; and to possess those hardy, rugged ele- 
ments of endurance and virtue which mark God's 



YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE. 211 

noblemen is to be fitted for earth and to be ready 
for heaven. 

That character is not an inheritance, it is an 
achievement. It would be cheap if purchased at 
the price of Golconda, but no Golconda can buy 
it. It is a growth, the slow development of years, 
but it is worth more to him who has it than any- 
thing this side of the stars, and worth more to the 
world as an inspiration and an incentive than all 
the other elements of civilization in splendid ag- 
gregation. Society receives no diviner heritage 
than that of a man who, when called to heaven, 
leaves for our benefit an example which stirs the 
heart of youth to imitation. 

And in this great democracy of God every man 
may have character. He has so arranged the 
moral universe that, while wealth and fame and 
genius may be denied, the most sterling qualities 
of character are always granted to those who are 
willing to go through fire that they may come out 
pure gold. Character is within reach of all, the 
goal of the poor and the rich alike. No matter 
what your circumstances may be, whether you are 
born to a humble or a proud position, whether you 
work with hands or with brains, you can have a 



212 HERALD SERMONS. 

noble character if you are ready to pay God's 
price ; but without that payment you can have 
it neither here nor hereafter. 

Character, like everything else that is worth 
having, is dependent on conditions. The sculptor 
takes the marble in the rough, and it is only by 
ten thousand times ten thousand blows that it takes 
the shape of the dream he has dreamed. No 
matter how great his genius, he must patiently use 
the chisel and the mallet, keeping ever before him 
the perfect statue that is to be, or the marble will 
remain as uncouth as when it was quarried. The 
dream, the chisel, and the mallet! 

So it is in a man's spiritual experience. Patient 
work with a holy aspiration behind it, these are 
the materials out of which saints and heroes are 
made. The man who whimpers and complains of 
ill luck comes to naught. The man who is worthy 
of our praise is he who takes any fortune and 
hammers it into shape ; he does not ask for good 
luck, but for the strength to make good luck out 
of bad. 

Moreover, there is no perfect character without 
religious faith, because faith is the mother of in- 
centive. If one is to fall asleep to-morrow and 



YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE. 213 

wake nevermore, it makes little difference what he 
does to-day ; but if he is to live forever, and what 
he does to-day will result in good or ill to-morrow, 
he has a motive for self-control which, like the 
steam in the boiler, sets the whole machinery 
a-going and keeps it a-going. 

There are two prime duties — to believe in God 
as the best friend you can have, who will help you 
to achieve the best of which you are capable, and 
to believe in yourself as able, with that help, to 
fashion a godlike character out of the varying for- 
tune which falls to our human lot. 

It is worth while to live honestly if we have a 
heaven to look forward to ; and certain it is — as 
certain as that night follows day — that our condi- 
tion hereafter will be decided, not by our profes- 
sions, nor yet by our creed, but by that combination 
of qualities which are summed up in the one awful 
but also glorious word — character. 



THIS LONGING FOR IMMORTALITY. 

" And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven." — Acts i. 10. 

We did not come into the world of our own 
accord, and are therefore not responsible for being 
here. 

It is evident, however, that we are here for a 
purpose, and it is perfectly clear what that pur- 
pose is. 

When we arrive it is with a perfectly helpless 
body. For a time we must be taken care of, our 
necessities supplied by some person or persons 
who have been appointed to that end. After a 
few years we obtain possession of ourselves and 
begin to think and act on our own judgment. 

The body goes through the mysterious processes 
of growth and continues to develop until it reaches 
a certain stature ; then the growth ceases, and by 
slow degrees the body declines in strength until at 
last we enter the stage of childhood a second time. 
214 



THIS LONGING FOR IMMORTALITY. 21$ 

The law is that the body shall increase until it 
reaches its maximum of energy. It is safe, there- 
fore, to generalize and say that everything has a 
purpose ahead of it, and ought to have such an 
environment that this purpose can be reached, 
provided the laws which govern it are obeyed. 
That statement proves itself and is not subject to 
denial. 

The mind and the soul, like the body, are merely 
dormant possibilities at birth. They know nothing 
and have experienced nothing. Knowledge and 
experience come little by little, and in that way 
mind and soul commence to develop. 

Now, if it be true that the body grows to its full 
height and strength by what it feeds on, we ought 
to say without fear of contradiction that there is 
also an ideal perfection for mind and soul to reach, 
and that in some way and somewhere the oppor- 
tunity will be offered to attain that ideal. It would 
be strange to declare that one part of us can come 
to its maturity, but the other part never will, for 
it is plainly true that no human soul has ever yet 
reached that point where there was nothing more 
or better that it could do or become. 

We have, then, this curious anomaly, namely, 



2l6 HERALD SERMONS. 

that, so far as this present life is concerned, — 
counting a man as consisting of body, soul, and 
spirit, — one third of us is accorded fair play for 
itself with a generous hand, while two thirds of 'us, 
and altogether the best part of us, are denied the 
chance to attain their legitimate end. 

The idea of immortality, therefore, originates in 
the very necessity of the case, and we rightly argue 
that if God is just He will give us hereafter the 
opportunity which not even He can furnish us 
within the narrow limits of earthly life. We may 
reverently assert that no soul ever can, under any 
conceivable circumstances, achieve in these seventy 
years a moral perfection which corresponds with 
the physical perfection which the body easily 
attains. There is something wanting to the soul, 
then, and that something is an extended opportu- 
nity, which can only result from an extended 
existence. 

The fact is everywhere patent that the spiritual 
part of man has hardly more than waked up when 
Death drops the curtain. The first act has been 
put on the stage and is being played well or badly, 
as the case may be. We see at a glance that there 
is a plot, and we become interested in it. That 



THIS LONGING FOR IMMORTALITY. 217 

first act suggests the second and the third, and so 
on to the end. The characters are all there, the 
dramatic material for a tragedy or a comedy is 
abundant, and when the curtain falls on that mere 
prologue, we have a right to expect — why not the 
right to demand ? — that the play shall continue until 
the plot has been fully developed and the purpose 
which the author had in view has been attained. 

Now we have a large number of great men in 
the world, who rise like pyramids from a level 
plain ; but the greatest of them all is conscious of 
inexhaustible resources, and feels capable of doing 
grander things than any yet achieved. That is a 
very startling fact. No man ever got to the end 
of himself, for somehow a great deed simply opens 
the door to other deeds still greater. 

But there is another fact which is painfully 
pathetic, namely, that there are hosts of men in 
every rank of life who are striving hard to make 
both ends meet and who have the undeveloped 
capacity for greatness. Give them the opportu- 
nities of education and environment, and they will 
attain an eminence now beyond the reach of their 
vision. The earth is full of undeveloped greatness 
— greatness suppressed by circumstance. 



2l8 HERALD SERMONS. 

Therefore there will be a second and a third act 
to this drama; another life will furnish what has 
for a time been refused. The purpose wrought 
into the soul by its Creator will be attained here- 
after. Death is only the servant who opens the 
door when Providence rings the bell, and ushers 
you into the larger building, where you will have 
the chance to become a larger man. 

Amid the drudgery and hardship of life keep 
that truth in mind and it will clear the fogs away 
and leave* you in sunshine. We are on the road 
home, and the way is sometimes dark and dreary, 
but when we get there we shall see that every 
experience of earth was intended to fit us for the 
higher joys of heaven. 



THE WICKED TONGUE. 

" And their tongue is deceitful in their mouth." — Mic. vi. 12. 

THE one thing to be guarded most carefully is 
the tongue. Deceitful tongues have done more 
harm than all the wars that were ever waged. 
Cities have been ravaged by the sword, but repu- 
tations are ravaged by the tongue. As a weapon 
of revenge, slander and gossip are surer than 
poison. They are more cunning than the subtlest 
drug, and more effective; for while the one pro- 
duces death, which is a matter of very little con- 
sequence, the others result in despoiling a life, 
which is a matter of infinite moment. 

There are two crimes which stand side by side 
at the head of the list — to speak evil of your 
neighbor, and to listen to it. The listening ear and 
the slanderous tongue are the two organs of the 
human body upon which the devil chiefly depends 
for the accomplishment of his purposes. If you 
219 



220 HERALD SERMONS. 

will give him your ear and let him find the tongue 
to fill it, heaven will grow sad and the pit will 
rejoice. 

One of the highest virtues the heart can cherish 
is the virtue of a dull ear when slander croaks. 
Slander is never backed by a good motive; it is 
only a base heart that can say base things. The 
homes are countless that have been wrecked by 
loose talk which had no more foundation than " the 
baseless fabric of this vision," and he who deals in 
it does what not enriches him, but makes some 
one else poor indeed. As a general thing, when 
one slyly distils an evil rumor in your ear, it is 
because he hopes it is true. If the rule of Christ 
were followed, " Let him that is without sin among 
you cast the first stone," slander would slink away 
and hide itself, as did the accusers of the magdalen 
in the olden time. 

How precious may a few words be if rightly 
and opportune^ spoken, if they take the form of 
encouragement, if they have a warm and generous 
impulse behind them! What miracles they may 
work in one's life! " I have dreamed a dream!" 
cries the hopeful youth, as he faces the future. 
Some one hears him and replies, " I made my dream 



THE WICKED TONGUE. 22 1 

come true, and you can do the same." How 
changed that future is, and what fresh inspirations 
are added to that soul just getting a glance at the 
reality of things! " Nay, nay," says the saintly 
matron to the young girl who is about to step 
aside from the path of virtue ; " this is God's world, 
and we must do God's will at any cost to ourselves." 
Hesitation becomes fixed resolve, and to the ninety 
and nine is added one more to make the hundred 
complete. 

Now, opposite the sweetest lies the bitterest, 
and opposite the best lies the worst. What can 
the mind conceive more unworthy of an immortal 
soul than a phrase so framed that it bears discour- 
agement to him who hears it ? A sentence that 
contains an innuendo may cause more evil than 
can be measured. If a man is trying to get out 
of the pit, such a sentence is like a heavy hand 
placed on his shoulder, pushing him back. To 
spread a rumor of evil concerning any one, and 
especially concerning any woman, is to do an act 
at which the angels weep and on which the very 
heavens frown. It is hard enough to do right 
under the best of circumstances, and he who adds 
to the difficulty may perchance make it thereby 



222 HERALD SERMONS. 

impossible to do right and so seal the doom of a 
struggling fellow-creature. Words are sometimes 
as light as thistledown in the wind, but at other 
times they are as heavy as lead or they may even 
crush like an avalanche. 

I say, therefore, that nothing in your possession 
should be so carefully watched as your lips. Do 
and say all you can to cheer, for God only knows 
the secrets of our lives, how much we need to hear 
such words, and how much influence they may 
exert. But never, never, never, under any provo- 
cation, allow yourself to strengthen a rumor of 
scandal. If there is wrong in any soul, it will 
produce its own results, for the laws of the uni- 
verse are inexorable ; but if the wrong is not there, 
and by any word from your mouth you give the 
impression that it is there, you judge as you would 
not like to be judged, and you would think it a 
great calamity if a like measure were meted out to 
you. 

We should be helpful, not hurtful, to one another. 
It is one of the primary demands of the Christian 
religion that we shall love our neighbor ; and where 
love is there is always pity for the falling, but 
never a word that shall make it easy for them to 



THE WICKED TONGUE. 22X 

slip farther down. Open your mouth to say all 
the good you can of every one, but seal your 
mouth against the utterance of a sarcasm or a 
suspicion. Let it not be said in that future when 
we shall see face to face instead of through a glass, 
darkly, that you pressed any soul back by an un- 
generous utterance ; for words are things, words 
are piercing swords, words are blizzards that tear 
trees up by the roots, words are lightning-bolts 
that strike sometimes to kill. 

If you can say nothing good, say nothing at all. 
Remember the legend of the stranger who stood 
unknown in the crowd that was curiously gazing 
at a dead dog. The poor creature had many 
blemishes, and they were all enumerated by the 
lookers-on, but one mild voice was heard saying, 
" He had beautifully white teeth." They turned 
in surprise, and a woman whispered, " It must be 
the Christ, for He alone could say anything good 
of a dead dog." The example is worth following. 

And how much better the world would be if, in 
lieu of speaking evil, we should either utter words 
of praise and encouragement or maintain a chari- 
table silence! 



A WONDROUS TRUTH. 

"' And Jesus, immediately knowing . . . that virtue had gone 
out of Him, turned, . . . and said, Who touched My clothes?" 
— Mark v. 30. 

This little incident contains the clue to a whole 
system of spiritual philosophy. For many centuries 
we have recognized its pathos without perceiving 
the truth that lay behind it. The time has come, 
however, in the world's enlarged experience and 
widening knowledge, when we have taken another 
look, and found with glad surprise a revelation of 
heretofore unknown possibilities. 

Not all that Christ said two thousand years ago 
is yet understood ; there are summits still covered 
with mist ; and it is more than probable that scores 
of generations must pass before we can make prac- 
tical use of many truths which are literally buried 
in the Scriptures awaiting resurrection. The light- 
ning has always been in the clouds, but until the 
224 



A WONDROUS TRUTH. 225 

race had reached a certain intellectual strength the 
discovery was impossible. You may state the 
principles of algebra to a child, but he does not 
apprehend them until he becomes a man. In the 
Bible more is concealed than is revealed, but little 
by little, as we grow toward maturity, we open 
new windows and get new views. 

Look at the text once more. A sick woman 
pressed through the crowd, knelt on the ground, 
touched His garment, and was healed. It was a 
miracle ? Names count for nothing, but in God's 
world everything is orderly. In that incident no 
law was broken, but a new law was announced. 
To produce results in accordance with higher laws 
than those generally known is apparently to work 
miracles. Christ's ways were simply God's ways, 
and therefore in our ignorance we find it difficult 
to explain Him. 

But stranger than the cure is the fact that He 
immediately knew that " virtue had gone out of 
Him." Then He suffered actual loss of something 
and was conscious of the loss, and that something 
was of such a nature that it wrought a physical 
change in its recipient. 

Two great laws are laid bare, and we must needs 



226 HERALD SERMONS. 

tremble in their presence, for they are far-reaching 
in their possible influence. If we ponder them 
they will make for us a new heaven and a new 
earth. 

In the first place, if the woman's attitude had 
been one of doubt instead of faith, her disease 
would not have been affected by contact. We are 
now treading on very sacred ground, and the truth 
is made clear that when you and God are in close 
relations the storm ceases and there is calm. The 
woman believed, trusted, yearned for help, and 
that frame of mind is the basis, the only basis, of 
true religion. There were others in that crowd 
who must have touched Him also, either because 
of the press or from curiosity, but nothing unusual 
occurred. And the reason why they too were not 
healed is that God never goes through the closed 
door of a heart. If you open the door and stand 
on the threshold to welcome the guest, He comes. 
If you turn your face toward the west, then for 
you there is no sunrise ; but if you face the east 
and wait, the morning will break on your troubled 
life. 

In the second place, if — and I say it reverently 
— if Christ had been self-seeking or worldly, no 



A WONDROUS TRUTH. 22"] 

virtue would have gone out of Him. Selfishness 
is miserly. It would have clutched the wondrous 
possession and kept it within narrow limits for 
narrow purposes. The willingness of Christ to 
give, because He loves with infinite compassion, 
and the anxiety of man to receive — there, and 
there only, can be found material out of which to 
construct a world-saving religion. Heaven reach- 
ing down and man reaching up — then come the 
union and the communion, which work miracles. 
What are your cold and chilling statements^ of 
truths that are merely secondary, which you gather 
together and call a creed, what are they when 
compared with these two glowing facts? A creed 
is truth frozen into glittering icicles, but Christ's 
words are a blazing fire on the wintry hearthstone, 
which gives new life to the benumbed traveler who 
knocks at the door and asks for shelter. 

But a third fact must not be neglected. Christ's 
love and sympathy created that something which 
is called " virtue," and which He could impart as 
a remedy for physical and spiritual ills. If we too 
become pure in heart and walk in company with 
" unseen beings," shall not we too have a moiety 
of the same " virtue," and cannot we in our smaller 



228 HERALD SERMONS. 

way bless the world ? What a vista opens before 
us! If we could get free from the bondage of 
passion, could feel that nothing is of value except 
the beautiful, the true, and the good, could literally 
dwell among heavenly thoughts, do what is right 
simply because it is right, and regard this life as a 
few lines of preface to the life eternal, then our 
broken-heartedness and our despondency would 
take their flight and leave us gentle pilgrims to 
the far-away shore. And the poor and sorrowing 
and bereaved who came in touch with our quiet 
lives would receive of the " virtue " which makes 
one strong and glad. Religion, rightly understood, 
is the staff on which we lean as we climb toward 
the stars. 



LIVING IN GOD. 

" In Him we live, and move, and have our being." — Acts xvii. 28. 

THERE is an old apothegm which runs, " Never 
sit in the shadow if it is possible to sit in the sun- 
shine." If we can apply this advice to our religion 
we shall find happiness in many an unexpected 
place, and the corduroy road of many an experi- 
ence will be changed to a smoother highway. 

It is easy to make life hard by simply imagining 
that it is hard to make it easy. In doing so, how- 
ever, we run against the grain of eternal verity, 
for the mission of all spiritual law is to make us 
strong and cheerful. 

Heaven is distressed by the fact that earth turns 
its back on God, then declares that it cannot see 
Him, and thereupon seriously raises the question 
whether He is there or not. One may as well be 
blind as to look the wrong way. 

The Scriptures are a trumpet-blast proclaiming 
229 



230 HERALD SERMONS. 

that God can always be found when you need Him 
enough to take the trouble to look for Him. We 
may truly liken them to a giant's hand outstretched 
from the heavens to assist us over the rough places 
of life. 

The religion that the heart craves, the religion 
which is to the soul what oxygen is to the lungs, 
cannot be crystallized into a creed any more than 
a disembodied spirit can be caught and caged. It 
disdains such narrow limitations. Mere phrases 
cannot express its beauty. The child who can put 
its love for its mother into logical terms does not 
love her as he should ; but when their arms are 
about each other and their silent lips meet, then 
they both understand what love means. In like 
manner, when God and you meet and you become 
conscious of the divine presence, words are useless, 
if not impossible. He alone knows what true re- 
ligion is who cannot tell you what it is, because 
language fails to reach its depths. 

To live and move and have our being in Him — 
these are the esoteric elements of Christianity. As 
the fish lives and moves and has its being in the 
water, is nourished and upborne by it, is sur- 
rounded by it, is penetrated by it in all its parts, 



LIVING IN GOD. 23 1 

and would gasp and die if lifted above the surface, 
so may a man live in God and be conscious that 
God lives in him. The fatal ability to shut God 
out from the soul, the exercise of which constitutes 
practical infidelity, — the only kind of infidelity that 
is worth a moment's attention, — is the source of 
all the ills from which we suffer. If you board up 
your windows it is useless to complain of the lack 
of ventilation. The difficulty is not with the fresh 
air, which is abundant and health-giving, but with 
you. 

If a young man falls into evil ways, he need not 
wonder if he reaps disease long before the autumn 
comes. The law of the universe would be his 
friend, but he has made it his enemy. Indeed, he 
has practically declared that he can either repeal 
or defy that law, but all the while the law is mak- 
ing him a new illustration of the fact that it can 
be neither repealed nor defied. He succumbs on 
a field whereon no man has ever yet been victor. 
It is not safe to shake the fist in challenge to om- 
nipotence ; the battle is unequal. Never put your- 
self, like a kernel of corn, between the upper and 
lower millstones, for only one result is possible. 
Vice never has made and never will make music 



232 HERALD SERMONS. 

for the soul, simply because God has made the soul 
too large and noble to be satisfied with anything 
short of virtue. When you live outside the line 
of God's purpose, the fish is on the land instead of 
in its proper element, and it suffers ; put it back 
into the water, and the memory of the past is lost 
in gratitude for the present. 

Literally you may live in God, and a life of 
veritable miracle it will be. These human hearts 
may be filled with God as the sponge in the depths 
of ocean is filled with water. If you can be pas- 
sive in His hands, if you can lift the curtains in 
your spiritual house and let the sunshine of His 
presence fill the rooms, if you can love and trust 
as the Christ did, what a wonder-world this will 
become! And it is possible; for did not the 
Master say, " Greater things than these shall ye 
do"? We have not yet learned what religion is 
or what it can do for a man. We have looked at 
it from afar, our eyes dimmed by strange preju- 
dices and misconceptions, but when our feet ac- 
tually press its sacred soil, and, looking up, we can 
see the " cloud of witnesses," then life will be a 
mountain-path that leads to the summit and thence 
to the eternal Beyond. 



BROWN STUDIES; 

Or, Camp Fires and Morals. 

By GEORGE H. HEPWORTH. 
i6mo, 332 pages. Illustrated, gilt top, $1.25. 

" In the form of a story, the author takes the reader to the Adiron- 
dacks, where the chief character, with his guides and a dog, spends a 
winter discoursing of life, its demands, duties and customs." — N. Y. Times, 



" It is a sweet, true book, good to read, with much manly vigor and 
not a little feminine gentleness." — Indepe?ide?it. 

" Mr. Hepworth has done some excellent things in a literary way, as 
' Hiram Golf's Religion ' bears ample testimony; but we have no hesitation 
in pronouncing this essay, short-story romance, as in every respect his 
best. In something the same vein as ' Dream Life,' it is to our mind 
better."— Boston Advertiser. 



HERALD SERMONS. 

By Rev. GEORGE H. HEPWORTH, 

AUTHOR OF " HIRAM GOLF'S RELIGION," ETC. 

45 Short Sermons reprinted from the New York Herald. 
i2mo, 252 pages. Portrait of Author, $1.00. 

" For months past a sermon has appeared as the leading editorial in 
the Sunday edition of the Herald, and these sermons have now been 
published in book form. In reproducing these admirable discourses the 
publishers have unquestionably acted wisely. Both here and in Europe a 
lively controversy has been aroused in consequence of the bold statements 
and striking originality of these weekly essays on religious topics, while 
at the same time great curiosity has been manifested in regard to the per- 
sonality of the author. 

" But why have these sermons caused such a sensation ? Do they differ 
so much from ordinary sermons ? . . . . Lucidity, brevity, the ex- 
pression of vital truths in clear cut Saxon English, absence of dogmatism, 
an evident abhorrence of intolerance of all kinds, a catholic sympathy 
with human beings of all ranks and creeds, and a determination to insist 
on all occasions that ecclesiasticism, with its formulas and rigid adherence 
to the letter of the law, is quite a different thing from the simple, soul 
satisfying religion of Christ— these, we think, are the chief characteristics 
of George H. Hepworth, as made known to us through this book, and it 
is precisely because he has given full play to his individuality that these 
sermons of his are well worth reading now, and will be well worth read- 
ing long after the author has passed away." — New York Herald. 

" In these sermons subjects were chosen which come home to every 
individual some time in his life whether he is in one church or another, or 
in no church ; and they were treated in such a broad way that they could 
be beneficial to all. The sermons have one excellent merit which it would 
be well if some of those given in pulpits could be patterned after — they 
are brief and strictly to the point. Some of the sermons which are par- 
ticularly helpful or suggestive are, 'A Wasted Life,' ' Prayer,' ' The 
Problem of Poverty,' 'Why Do We Suffer?' 'Heroes and Heroines,' 
' Bearing Good Fruit,' ' Do What You Think Is Right,' ' Little 
People Who Live Little Lives,' and ' You Shall Have Strength.' These 
are a few of those in the volume, every one of which will contain some 
word for some one in trouble or doubt." — Boston Transcript. 

" They are addressed to men and women entangled in the perplexities 
of life, and help them not so much by opening to them a larger faith as by 
disclosing to them the hope and comfort which lies in the faith they now 
hold." — Independent. 



HERALD SERMONS. 

SECOND SERIES. 

By GEORGE H. HEPWORTH. 

i2mo, cloth bound, $1.00. 



THEY MET IN HEAVEN 

By GEORGE H. HEPWORTH. 

5th thousand. i6mo, 216 pages, cloth, 75 cents. 

An account of The Fireside Club and its discussions during the 
winter preceding the death of Hiram Golf. 

"This is a tender and helpful study in religious experiences. . . . 
To many Dr. Hepworth's method may be a hand stretched out from 
heaven. To all it will be a book of pure, gentle and persuasive Christian 
inspiration. . . . We have no doubt that an inquirer like Van Brunt, 
shut up in the dark, barren and hopeless cage of intellectual orthodoxy 
and spiritual leanness, would find Hiram Golf's method a door open 
into faith." — Independent. 

" It tells of a small club of friends, one of whom is Hiram Golf, the 
now well-known 'shoemaker by the grace of God,' and how their chats 
brought trust and peace to one bereaved, despairing and almost crazed, by 
unfolding to him the hopes of heaven and of reunion with the beloved 
dead which the gospel suggests. It is eminently readable, and is practical 
and inspiring." — Congregationalist. 

"The reading public, after enjoying ' Hiram Golf's Religion' by this 
same talented author, will cordially welcome this very interesting com- 
panion volume. It is a gem of the first water, like the other. It portrays 
in a skilful, yet natural and tender manner, a case of genuine religious ex- 
perience. It shows how men, struggling in deep mental and moral dark- 
ness — the most unlikely subjects of conquering grace — may be led out into 
life and faith and hope and heaven. Books of this character have a 
blessed mission, and should be warmly received and widely read. The 
narrative portions are fascinating. The whole is put in a most charming 
and persuasive way." — Christian Intelligencer, 



THE LIFE BEYOND. 

This riortal flust Put on Immortality. 

By GEORGE H. HEPWORTH. 
2nd thousand. i6mo, 116 pages, cloth, 75 cents. 

" The author of this choice book is pleased to think that he has made 
no single statement which can in any proper sense be called original ; but 
he has given the oldest truths and the commonest beliefs a freshness of put- 
ting and illustration better than originality. He tells the old, old story : 
he tells it in a way to stimulate interest and desire and afford consolation 
to the wearied and forlorn, who are seeking for sources of comfort in the 
unseen and immeasurable things beyond the vail." — Ziorfs Herald. 

" The thoughts presented are expressed clearly and forcibly, and in a 
style fitted to commend them to tried and sorrowing hearts," — Watchman,, 



Hiram Golf's Religion; 

OR, 

"The Shoemaker by the Grace of God." 

By GEORGE H. HEPWORTH. 
29th thousand. i6mo, 134 pages, cloth, 75 cents. 

" Plain talks of a shoemaker and a parson. They are in dialect ; the 
style is both quaint and strong. A book that gives the reader something 
to think about. . . . The sterling, homely common sense of the book 
is commanding wide attention." — The Evangelist, 

" This little book contains, in quaint and simple sketches, the essence 
of practical Christianity. Hiram Golf is a man who exemplifies the pre- 
cept, ' Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of 
God.' His talks with the young minister are the best sort of lay sermons, 
and his life is at once a model and an inspiration. The book cannot fail 
to be of service to ministers and laymen alike." — New York Observer. 

"The point is that serving God consists in doing His will, especially 
so as to benefit one's fellow men and women, wherever one finds himself. 
It is a powerful and touching little story and should have a large circula- 
tion." — Congregatio7ialist. 

ALSO NOW READY. 
An entirely New Edition of 

HIRAM GOLF'S RELIGION 

With paper cover. Price, 25 cents, by mail, postpaid. 



The Farmer and The Lord. 

1 vol. i6mo, 238 pages, half white cloth, 75 cents. 

"The Farmer and The Lord" is one of Dr. George Hepworth's 
familiar talks about points in practical religion, after the style of " Hiram 
Golf's Religion." The basis of Dr. Hepworth's talks is the promise that 
"if any man will do His will, he shall know the doctrine." 



Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price. 

E. P. DUTTON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 
31 West 23d Street, New York. 




■■■■Hi 



